16th December 2025 is Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary. I’ll be celebrating the anniversary by reading her six novels, in the order that she wrote them, in the six weeks leading up to the anniversary.

Title	Reading dates
Northanger Abbey	3rd November
Sense and Sensibility	10th Novermber
Pride and Prejudice	17th Novermber
Mansfield Park	24th November
Emma	1st December
Persuasion	9th December

I’m hoping that I can also add a dash of pastiche along the way in with two short audiobooks ‘Becoming Meg Dashwood‘ and ‘Mrs Wickham‘.

Marriage is not for Margaret Dashwood. Where others see duty, Margaret sees entrapment. And rage.
But when an invitation from family friend Mrs Jennings hurls her into the chaotic heart of Covent Garden, Margaret discovers an intoxicating world beyond afternoon tea and polite society. Here she meets three women who live unapologetically: Nelly, an impulsive actress; Hester, a witch who works in the textile factory; and Inge, a sex worker who loves money and knows exactly how to get it. Here, Margaret’s rage is celebrated, along with her musical talents, and in their fierce company she is reborn as Meg: artist, and woman of hidden fires.
All four women dare to imagine a life dictated by pleasure, politics, and possibility. But such a life demands sacrifice. Especially when Meg’s feelings for Nelly – tender, electric, terrifying – begin to deepen. How does one fall in love, when that love has no name?
Becoming Meg Dashwood is a riotous, rebellious period drama. A pleasure story, not a love story.
Except, of course, that it is.

Imagine if you made one little mistake when you were young and were punished for it for the rest of your life. Well, that’s what happened to Lydia (yes, that Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister from Pride and Prejudice), and she’s here to set the record straight. Hold on to your teacups and get ready for sophisticated (and a little bit naughty) hot takes and witty banter that’ll make you laugh—and think.
We meet Lydia just as she is denounced by her family, exiled miles from home, and married to the rogue George Wickham, who seems to love all women…except his own wife. She must learn to summon great bravery to carve out a place for herself in the society that has brutally rejected her.
Lydia isn’t the traditional Austen heroine, and this isn’t a traditional, polite period drama. Lydia is a badass. A trailblazer. She’s fierce and fiercely funny. And she might inhabit the Regency period, but she’s fighting the same battle many of us are today—having to defend the decisions she’s made and the person she chooses to love, to shut out the ‘trolls’ and gossips, to hold her head high in a world that will judge her for any mistake she makes.

If anyone wants to read along with me, I’d love to hear what your thoughts after reading or re-reading the books.