Reconstructing Jane Austen's Childhood Home (Where She Wrote "Pride and Prejudice.")

How do you set a story in a physical location that no living person has set foot in--and was demolished prior to the invention of photography? This was a challenge that I encountered when I chose Jane Austen and her childhood home of Stevenson Rectory for the setting of my book, "Lilibet Lynn and the Austen Cipher."

Jane Austen is a really interesting research subject because if you dig deep enough, you can really find out a tremendous amount about her life. And yet there are some details that I struggled to identify in the short timeframe I had to craft "Austen Cipher." I only nailed down the color of Jane and Cassandra's eyes at the eleventh hour!

Jane's childhood home, the rectory at Steventon, was demolished in the early 1800's. What details we have must be scrounged together from a myriad of sources, and in some place, merely extrapolated or logically guessed. While I ran into the same problem with Nottingham Castle in the first Lilibet book, that was easy to fudge as the specifics of the floorplan were not necessary for the plot. General, common castle features were enough to suit the story. 

However, for "Austen Cipher", most of the story takes place within the confines of the Steventon Rectory and the movement throughout the house needed to be tightly choreographed. Since Jane Austen is such a beloved and analyzed subject, I knew that if the details were out there, I had to find them, otherwise I'd have rabid Janite's on my tail. 

Thankfully, Linda Robinson Walker compiled a deliciously robust analysis of the rectory, and from her work I was able to construct a rough floor plan, which I could use to guide the movements of the characters in my story.

My rough floorplan sketch 

I was also inspired by the beautiful picture book, "Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen" by Deborah Hopkinson. Although I wanted to independently verify what I found in her book, (particularly the location of the servants and student bedchambers), my findings coincided with what was displayed in the book. 

There are three sketches purported to be of the exterior of the Rectory, completed by Jane's niece, Anna Lefroy, who lived in the house for many years.  However, the sketches are just that--sketches, beautiful but monochromatic. I thought it would be great fun to reproduce the rear-view sketch in watercolors. 

Top: Anna Lefroy  Bottom: My Reproduction

Although my book is set in December, Anna Lefroy's sketch which served as my basis for this painting was clearly set in the height of summer, so I went with that in my reproduction. It was fascinating to get into Anna's mind a bit here. I found myself wondering if there was really so much foliage around the house, or if Anna exaggerated it to gloss over some of the persnickety architectural details. The perspective was fairly ambitious here!

If you'd like to see how I went about reproducing this painting, you may watch a process video at my Instagram account here.

Want to travel back in time and explore the Steventon Rectory alongside Jane Austen? Check out my middle-school novel (loved by all ages), Lilibet Lynn and the Austen Cipher.