Jane Austen exhibition launches at SeaCity Museum

The much-anticipated exhibition 'A Very Respectable Company – Jane Austen and Her Southampton Circle' opened on Saturday 29 March 2025 in the Southampton Stories gallery of SeaCity Museum. 

The exhibition highlights Austen’s time in Southampton, where she lived on several occasions, casting light on her circle of friends and relations. The display is part of the celebrations taking place across Hampshire, marking the 250th anniversary of her birth.

Jane Austen’s social circle featured a fascinating mix of individuals, including Charlotte Fitzhugh, who married into a prominent East India Company family and was a devoted fan of Austen’s favourite actress, Sarah Siddons; and Ann Morse Middleton, a mixed-race plantation heiress born in Jamaica, married in India, whose personal life made headlines in national newspapers.

These women could easily have inspired the characters found in Austen’s novels such as Mansfield Park, Emma and Sanditon. The exhibition will showcase loaned items from the archives of their descendants, offering new and rarely seen materials connected to Austen’s social circle, including the Austen Family Household Book, personal items and portraits of some of Jane Austen’s Southampton relatives.

The items on display also include letters written to John Butler Harrison, who married Jane Austen’s cousin Elizabeth Matilda as well as a wide range of prints and paintings from the museum collection, illustrating the town that Jane Austen knew, both when she was briefly at school here in 1783, when visiting relatives as a teenager and later, when she lived in Southampton, in 1806-09.

Councillor Lorna Fielker Leader of the Council said:

“The 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth feels like the right time to celebrate her many connections to Hampshire and to Southampton in particular. I feel proud that we can honour her and her works in this exhibition of rarely seen items. We hope that the exhibits will inspire a new generation of authors.”