Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of Lyme's most famous and best-loved visitors. Her great novel, Persuasion, published in 1818, is in part set in Lyme, making the town a centre of literary pilgrimage ever since.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of Lyme's most famous and best-loved visitors. She stayed here with her family in the summer of 1804, and wrote to her sister, Cassandra, of what she had seen and done in the town: walking on the Cobb, dancing in the Assembly Rooms, bathing (from a bathing machine) and rather overdoing it, disputing with her landlord the price of a broken jug. Her great novel, Persuasion, published posthumously in 1818, is in part set in Lyme, making the town a centre of literary pilgrimage ever since.