Pride but no prejudice: U.K. celebrates Jane Austen's 250th anniversary

By the time she died at just 41, Jane Austen had penned six books that would revolutionize the English novel and created a cultural phenomenon that lasts to this day.

CHAWTON, England — By the time she died at just 41, Jane Austen had penned six books that would revolutionize the English novel and created a cultural phenomenon that lasts to this day.

Her most famous book, “Pride and Prejudice,” has sold millions of copies, and the story of the tenacious Elizabeth Bennet and the brooding Mr. Darcy has become a fixture on school reading lists around the world, the inspiration for an almost endless stream of movie and television adaptations, not to mention podcasts and social media channels devoted to the work.

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If Austen arrived at the front door of her family home in the English village of Chawton this summer, however, she could be forgiven for thinking it was still the early 1800s.

She would find women in bonnets curtseying to men in top hats, couples chastely dancing the quadrille, and the small table where she handwrote her novels almost exactly where she left it.