Product Description

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel LADY SUSAN depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, THE WATSONS is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine - Emma - finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride. Meanwhile SANDITON, set in a seaside resort, offers a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and spectators, treated by Austen with both amusement and scepticism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17299 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Book Information
Together, these three works--one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments--reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist.

Lady Susan, with its wicked, beautiful, intelligent and energetic heroine, is a sparkling melodrama which takes its tone from the outspoken and robust 18th century. Written later, and probably abandoned after her father's death, The Watsons is a tantalising and highly delightful story whose vitality and optimism centre on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town. Sanditon, Jane Austen's last fiction, is set in a seaside town and its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.

About the Author
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was very modest about her own achievements, but has become one of the most celebrated and well-loved writers in English literature. Her best-selling and most enduring novels include PRIDE AND PREJEUDICE and EMMA. Margaret Drabble is a writer and critic, her most recent novel is THE PEPPERED MOTH.

Customer Reviews

Essential Jane Austen.
Our capacity to form first impressions was one that Jane Austen examines in all her fiction. Her characters sometimes are shown to form incorrect impressions. Her characters often strive to give false impressions. None of her fictional characters is as preoccupied with setting up a public image in order to gain her own ends as the Lady Susan who gives this novella its name. Lady Susan is the archetypal coquette, the skilled deceiver. She is Thackeray’s Becky Sharp, fifty years before her time.

Jane Austen plays the game of deception with us too. In this novella, which is almost entirely in epistolary form, we form the impression from reading Lady Susan’s first letter, that she is a grieving widow, devoted to the care and education of her 16 year old daughter, and willing at last to accede to her brother-in-law’s pressing invitation to stay with him and his family. Wrong! We too have been duped, as we soon discover.

Jane Austen first drafted several of her novels in epistolary form, that is to say, in the form of letters exchanged by her characters. This one, which may have been the earliest of all her surviving works, alone remained in this form. And great fun it is, although Lady Susan’s contriving and heartlessness, especially in regard to her daughter, sometimes goes beyond the comic to the cruel.

Naxos has added to the fun that this “entertainement” can provide by issuing the novella in audio book form. Seven actors are allocated the parts of the seven letter writers. Furthermore, there is no abridgement of the text, and there are some snatches of music that serve to provide breaks between the letters and indicate the passing of time. Altogether, an ideal production.

most enjoyable
I enjoyed the beautiful language and style of this audiobook. Once started it was impossible to stop the CD player. Lady Susan with her manipulative skills is amazing!