THIS year my wife and I travelled to Hampshire and Dorset visiting sites connected with Jane Austen, born 250 years ago this December.

The rectory of her early life has been demolished but the house where she lived with her mother and sister in the last years of her life was definitely worth the trouble. We were moved by the memorial plaques in Winchester which record her death in 1817.

Jane’s novels are justifiably famous and universally loved, but the story of her own life is also wonderful. Mostly home-educated, unmarried, little travelled, no money of her own, utterly dependent on men in her family for accommodation, she rose from relative obscurity to the heights of literary fame, but not really during her lifetime.

Her novels were published anonymously, and she received little money for them. She had a letter from the Prince Regent and was becoming more widely known when she died aged only 41. Her funeral in Winchester Cathedral was tiny.

So why is Jane Austen now so celebrated, being the subject of documentaries and scholarship and never out of print?

Her observation of human nature and behaviour is acutely perceptive and accurate. Her literary style is clever and charming.

Her sense of humour is witty and subtly powerful. Her own character, revealed in letters and diaries, is strong and enigmatic.

The Anglican Church was a constant feature in Jane’s life. Her father and two brothers were clergymen. Christian teaching and ethics motivated her living and writing. She opposed slavery and was critical of hypocrisy in church and society.

All this made her very appealing to us, and we were moved and inspired by our pilgrimage to someone who used God’s gifts so well in an unexpected way during a short life.

John Keast, St John’s Methodist Church, St Austell