Literary Heritage Writ Large at the Jane Austen Festival, Bath

Jane Austen’s novels and their many adaptations constitute a significant feature in the literary heritage and tourism landscape. Attracting thousands of visitors from across the world, the annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath, Britain, is a prominent example of this popular(ised) form of literary heritage. In this chapter, I analyse key examples of how the festival represents and recreates Austen’s (literary) world by utilising, interweaving and, at times, blurring history and fiction, place and temporality, authenticity and (in)accuracy and, in so doing, promotes and emplaces Austen as British heritage for a global fanship.