Friday, July 11, 2014

The Face of Jane Austen

A waxwork likeness of Jane Austen was unveiled at the Jane Austen Centre on Wednesday in Bath, England.

A former FBI forensic artist, Melissa Dring, used the Cassandra Austen's sketch of her famous sister as the starting point for the waxwork. She also used diaries, letters and other contemporary accounts of Austen's appearance. Mark Richards, a sculptor, took Dring's final findings and created the waxwork itself.

It's a very nice life-like waxwork, and I, along with many Jane Austen fans, find it interesting to see what these artists think Jane may have looked like.

Anna Chancellor, who played Caroline Bingley in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice is actually a direct descendant of Jane Austen's brother, Edward. Do you think there's any "family resemblance"?


There's a waxwork of Jane outside the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, and it's very different from the new waxwork that is supposed to be the closest "anyone has come to the real Jane in 200 years" (according to a spokesman for the Centre). I took the picture below during my first trip to Bath in 2010.



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