Fodor's Expert Review Chawton House Library

Located in an Elizabethan country house on a 275-acre estate (part of the South Downs National Park), this library specializes in works by English women writers from 1600 to 1830, including authors such as Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Frances Burney. It also houses the Knight Collection, the private library of the family who owned the house for over 400 years. Jane Austen’s brother, Edward, inherited the property and added the walled kitchen garden, shrubberies, and parkland. You can see the dining room table where Austen joined her family for meals and the library collection that contains a manuscript written in her own hand.