IT IS a charming, but modest, abode on the corner of a row of cottages in a quiet East Hampshire village.

But it is here, in her beloved Chawton, that Jane Austen wrote or revised the novels that have so enchanted her millions of devotees around the world.

After moving into a succession of temporary lodgings, in Bath, Clifton, Warwickshire and Southampton, this is where this daughter of a not very well off clergyman, found her sense of place, and her inspiration.

The comings and goings of village life, the socialising with minor landed gentry, and the characters she encountered shaped her writing, which is so full of fun, social commentary and plot intrigue. Her circle was small but she described it with wit and detachment, which was not the literary fashion at the time, but it helped bring a new realism to writing.

All her novels – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield Park – now translated into more than 35 languages, are love stories, despite Jane and her much-loved sister Cassandra remaining life-long spinsters.

They all deal too, with the restrictive life of 19th century women, and she saved her most searing critiques for male idiocy. The Prince Regent, later George IV, was a fan, with Emma, ‘respectfully dedicated’ to him.

Chawton House Library curator Mary Guyatt, who is expecting to welcome up to 50,000 visitors by the end of this 200th anniversary year for Jane Austen, with tourists coming already from countries including New Zealand, Columbia and South Korea, summed up her enduring appeal.

“For me, her magic is her timeless observation of our pre-occupations with class and wealth and the games people play in their relationships. Two hundred years on, you can still feel her delighting in the life and voice she has given to each character and the fun she is going to have with them all,” she said.

Although Austen is now seen as one of the most important writers in literary history, she never got to see her full legacy, with her books published anonymously at first and with modest, or little, success.

The Chawton years were the most rewarding, with her books, at last, being well reviewed and read more widely.

This idyll was short-lived though as, eight years after moving there, she fell ill and died in 1817, aged 41 at Winchester. She is buried in the city’s cathedral.