Jane Austen's schoolroom in Reading will open for the 250th anniversary of her birth.

The room, in Reading's Abbey Quarter, is thought to have inspired Mr Goddard's School in Austen's novel, Emma.

The author spent 18 months at Reading Ladies' Boarding School from the age of nine.

The school was based in the former gateway of the medieval Reading Abbey.

(Image: Reading Museum)

The school became home to Jane, her elder sister Cassandra, and cousin Jane between the summer of 1785 and December 1786.

Reading Museum will be putting on a series of events, tours, and visits to the Abbey Gateway and Reading Abbey Quarter to tell the story of Jane’s time at school here as part of Reading’s Jane Austen 250 celebrations.

These will include visits to the film location for Pride and Prejudice - the National Trust’s Basildon Park, a Mill at Sonning theatrical world premiere of Death Comes to Pemberley, based on a PD James novel, as well as guided walks, tours, and talks.

Jane Austen’s mother is known to have said: "Jane was too young to make her going to school at all necessary... (but) she would go with Cassandra; if Cassandra’s head had been going to be cut off Jane would have hers cut off too."

Mr Austen paid £37 19shillings per girl per half year which would have included board, tuition, washing, materials, and dancing lessons, as was the norm, and the three cousins headed off to school in Reading in July 1785.

Jane mentions her school days only once in her letters, ‘I could die of laughter at it as they used to say at School’, but it is widely thought that when she describes Mrs Goddard’s School in Emma she is recalling her own school: "a real old-fashioned boarding school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies."

Many of Jane Austen’s family lived in the villages around Reading, making the school a logical choice.

Within a short period of leaving Reading, 12 year-old Jane was writing seriously.

Guided visits to her school room will be available every Saturday from April to October 2025 as part of Reading Museum’s Abbey Quarter tours.

There will also be a series of special events every Wednesday in May and June 2025.