Interest in all things Jane Austen remains high, following the celebrations of her 250th anniversary. In September, the museum based in her former home in Chawton, Hampshire, will host a Persuasion festival. But a less obvious beneficiary of this spike in interest is a museum dedicated to two writers she never met: William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The success of the BBC television series The Other Bennet Sister – which portrayed Mary, a minor character in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as a Wordsworth enthusiast – has led to an influx of visitors to Dove Cottage in Cumbria.
This has been a big year for the Wordsworth Trust, which owns the cottage, owing to its purchase of another house: Rydal Mount, two miles to the east. When this building is reopened, the poet will become one of a handful of authors, along with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, to have more than one of his homes opened to visitors.
