Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of her birth a statue of her was commissioned by the cathedral and unveiled on 16th October 2025. The commission was the idea of Dean Roly Riem, who led the project throughout in collaboration with his wife, artist Sophie Hacker.

The sculpture stands in the Inner Close with the figure of Austen turned towards the cathedral. Her hand rests on a notebook on her writing table. Contemporaneous descriptions of her appearance reveal someone different to the received image of a diminutive and homely figure. She was strikingly slim, looking tall for her 5ft 7ins height. She is represented here a little over life-size.

Through the inclusion of her writing equipment, the figure is indissolubly associated with her working life. Her writing table, strikingly modest in size, counterpoints the towering scale of her achievement as a novelist. Her acuity is emphasised, as is the moral vision running through her novels, even if this can only be done by abstract means, through posture and gaze.