Worthing has many literary associations with writers such as Richard Jefferies and Oscar Wilde.

But it wasn’t until recently that most people realised its connections with perhaps the greatest British female novelist of all, Jane Austen.

Only one visit by Austen is definitely known and that was in late 1805 before any of her books had been published.

But author Antony Edmonds thinks she may have made another visit to Worthing much later when she was more famous.

He also claims Sanditon, the fictitious town providing the title of her last unfinished novel, is based on Worthing.

Austen came to the Sussex seaside town in 1805 with her mother, her sister Cassandra and her close friend Martha Lloyd.

Among the people she met was Edward Ogle, driving force behind the transformation of Worthing from a small, undistinguished town into a major, fashionable resort.

She became friendly with Ogle and based one of the main characters in Sanditon on him. His imposing home, Warwick House, features in the book as Trafalgar House.

Edmonds says there is evidence Jane Austen remained on friendly terms with Ogle for several years after 1805.

He contends there is nothing implausible about the notion that she and Cassandra paid a further visit, perhaps more than one, to Worthing.

The resort was less than 50 miles from the Hampshire village of Chawton where she lived for the last eight years of her all too brief life. And the Austens travelled a lot.

Cassandra certainly returned there in 1817, three months after her sister’s death, with her brother James.

Edmonds says Austen fans, known as Janeites, knew she had been thinking of visiting Worthing through two letters Jane wrote to her sister in August 1805.

But the fact she actually went there that year was not discovered until 1989, when diaries of her niece Fanny were studied.

It was not until 2010 that a blue plaque was placed on Stanford’s Cottage to commemorate her stay there.

Edmonds adds that immediately he read Sanditon he realised it was based on Worthing as she had known it before its expansion.

Austen started Sanditon in January 1817 but abandoned it in March when she became too ill to continue.

But Edmonds says, “There is little evidence of any diminution in her powers and had the book been completed, it is likely that it would have been the equal of her six famous completed novels.”

Worthing’s prosperity did not long survive after Jane’s death. It declined as holiday patterns changed and Edmonds says it gradually became less fashionable.

It eventually came to be regarded as a quieter and more respectable alternative to Brighton, particularly suitable for children and invalids.

Edmonds has now written a whole book about Jane Austen and Worthing even though remarkably little is known about her time there.

He manages to broaden the subject by describing how lively Worthing was and how other famous visitors included Byron and Shelley. But the Janeites will only want Austen.

  • Jane Austen’s Worthing: The Real Sanditon by Antony Edmonds (Amberley Publishing £16.99)