] I agree. When she first visited she liked it well enough - a little like Catherine Morland - but she couldn't stand to LIVE there. She loved her home where she'd grown up and had friends and country walks too much.
] Certainly, when I was in Bath, the people at the Jane Austen centre said she stored up follies and characters in Bath, that successfully poured out when she left. The city was a great asset to all her books.

I agree that Bath and her intimate knowledge of the place were a great part of Jane's books. But I could well imagine that she did regard Bath similar to the way Anne did in Persuasion... her father retiring - no hustle and bustle of students and learning and brothers, etc. And she 25 already and probably was already feeling some pressure or obligation to find a husband. Bath was not a carefree place. It was a place to see and be seen, and that isn't conducive to quietness and space for creative writing necessarily. Steventon sounded like such a fun place to grow up, and I'm sure if I were Jane, I would be loath to leave it.