NEARLY 200 years after her death, an eight-day festival of events celebrating both Jane Austen and the Regency period is set to begin.

Jane Austen Regency Week will take place from June 18-26 in and around Alton and the nearby village of Chawton.

Chawton is home to Jane Austen’s House Museum, where the novelist spent the last eight years of her life and produced six classic novels. Nearby Alton is the place where she shopped, banked, collected and delivered post, visited her friends, and caught the stagecoach to London.

This year’s festival features Regency-style music, dining, drama and film, talks and walks, and a vintage fair, as well as a Regency Day with ball and dancing workshop.

The week begins with Regency Day in Alton, starting at 10am on Saturday, which will be full of historical delights such as carriage rides, a swordsmanship display, costumes, market stalls, dancing and other period entertainments.

The celebrations continue with a dancing workshop and then into the evening with a sumptuous Regency Ball, according to one of the organisers.

Sunday’s vintage fair in Chawton will have up to 30 stalls offering a plethora of interesting and unusual items and doors open at 10am at the village hall. Free tea or coffee is being served between 1pm and 2.30pm for anyone showing a copy of the printed Regency Week programme.

This will be followed in the evening by a Regency choral evensong at St Lawrence’s Church in Alton, the church where two of Jane’s brothers preached and several nieces and nephews were christened. It starts at 6.30pm, entry is free, and people are encouraged to come in Regency costume.

A new addition to the programme of talks is ‘Jane Austen Actors’, which be held next Tuesday, June 21, when actress Angela Barlow looks at the significance of acting and the theatre in Jane’s life and work.

And on June 23, people can discover the eccentricities of formal dining, from table etiquette and wine adulteration to promiscuous seating and chamber pots in a fun history talk by Dr Bob France in ‘Stedman the Regency Butler’ at the Allen Gallery on Church Street in Alton, from 7.30pm-9pm.

On June 22, Dr Kathrin Pieren, curator of Petersfield museum, will take visitors on a fascinating journey through fashion history using examples from the museum and other collections in ‘Fashion of the Regency Period’ at Chawton House Library, at 7pm.

People can also get creative Regency style on June 25 by learning how to make a Regency bonnet in a workshop at Jane Austen’s House Museum, from 10am-4pm.

Also at the museum is a display of the quilt made by Jane, her sister and mother and on June 22, starting at 2.30pm, there will be a talk about the history, construction and fabrics of this unique quilt as well its conservation and how Austen’s work and needlework have inspired modern quilters around the world.

On June 25, people can follow in the footsteps of the famous writer and see where she regularly walked around Alton to post and collect letters, to shop and catch the stagecoach to London. Historian Jane Hurst will take visitors on a tour of ‘Jane Austen’s Alton’, taking in historic buildings and highlighting the details of the people of the time known to Jane. The tour takes just over an hour and starts at 11am from the Curtis Museum on Crown Hill in the town.

The weekend’s finale comes in the form of a colourful Victorian cricket match, with entertainment for all the family at Butts Green on June 26, followed by a Regency supper at the Alton House Hotel, celebrating cuisine of the period, at 7.30pm.