From stately pile to humble cottage, property plays a central role in the novels of Jane Austen, who died 200 years ago today at the age of 42.

As her characters move up or down in the world, their fortunes and social standing are defined by the place they call home, a position neatly summed up by sharp-witted Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice who owns that her love for Mr Darcy may well have been fired by '... my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.'

The importance of property wasn’t confined to the page, of course, and the author herself lived at a host of addresses, charting the stages of her own short life. Her time in the fashionable spa town of Bath – the setting for both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion  – from 1801 to 1806, for example, began in Sydney Place and ended in Trim Street, following the reduced circumstances of the Austen family.

Today the streets that Austen would have known, though not necessarily loved, are flourishing, as is the city itself. As Northanger Abbey's Catherine Morland puts it, no one could ever be tired of Bath.