Candlelit Christmas, Regency style, at Jane Austen's Hampshire home

WATCH: ITV Meridian's Rachel Hepworth visited Jane Austen's House in Chawton for an immersive Christmas exhibition.

Dressed for Christmas- Regency style. No gaudy baubles and inflatable Santas- just understated elegance.

Jane Austen's House welcomes thousands of people every year- now, until January, visitors can immerse themselves in seasonal celebrations of the time, complete  with decorations made from discarded copies of Emma, and audio recordings of famous Christmas scenes from the novel itself.

Moving from room to room, visitors follow the story of Emma’s Christmas Eve dinner at Randalls and the fateful snowstorm that follows.

The story is told through a specially created audio installation that brings three key Christmas scenes from Emma to life, within the very rooms where the novel was written, with festive decorations and seasonal scents echoing the motifs in the story.

Sounds and scents from the story, from creaking carriages to roaring coal fires, contribute to the immersive effect throughout the House.

For Lizzie Dunford, Director of Jane Austen's House, the scenes are as relevant today as they were 200 years ago: "All of those dynamics that we can recognise today of someone who doesn't want to go to the party and someone who really does want to get to the party and somebody who has a little bit too much to drink and doesn't necessarily behave quite in the way that they should.

"Also knowing that these characters, in their words, were created in this room. So it really brings everything back together."

Jane Austen lived in the house for the last eight years of her life, before her death in 1817.

She wrote, reviewed and published all of her novels during that time, and would have recognised the elegance of the Christmas decorations on show this year.

"It's pre-Christmas trees" says Lizzie, "but lots of foliage making it as warm and light as possible in the darkest time of the year."

Screen adaptations have brought Austen's works to a wider audience, but 200 years after her death, love for her books and characters shows no sign of diminishing

Why do her stories resonate today so much? "I think it's this absolute timelessness of these characters," says Lizzie, " because she created real people and real people in their hearts never change. We might change what we wear, but people are people."

The Christmas installation, "Randalls at Christmas" runs until January the 7th - with a virtual party planned for Austen's birthday on December the 16th.