For Austen lovers who venture farther — about an hour west of London — one can see Austen’s own house, now a museum, in Chawton, Hampshire. I was there this summer, so jet-lagged I forgot to look for the site’s most famous artifact, the tiny writing table at which Jane wrote works including “Emma” and “Sense and Sensibility” and revisions of earlier novels, not to mention many of the letters, skits and doggerel on display at the Morgan. I did spend time, though, examining the also tiny twin canopy bed, smaller than a U.S. twin, that Jane shared with her sister, Cassandra.

Cassandra and Jane lived modestly at Chawton during Jane’s last eight years, along with their widowed mother and Martha Lloyd, a family friend. (Jane’s brother owned the property. Martha later married a different Austen brother.) Since Jane didn’t like to be known as a writer, a loose floorboard near the doorway apparently served as an alarm for her to hide away her writing implements whenever visitors called. You can still hear it creak.

Art at Chawton House — which could have been selected by curators, for all I know — consisted mostly of tiny prints and illustrations. A couple large painted portraits of kin were almost certainly assembled by curators.