Lady Susan has a simple plot: Comely but conniving widow Susan Vernon seeks her latest diversion seducing Reginald, the antagonistic brother of her sister-in-law Catherine while also determining to marry her daughter Frederica off to a rich, gauche young man the latter abhors. I have written so much on the subject of Sanditon in particular and am intent on posting more regularly so have decided to write about all three works separately. The Penguin omnibus is indispensable for Austen enthusiasts and entertaining enough to form a good introduction for those driven by happenstance or eccentricity to begin here and it also contains a wonderful plethora of engaging footnotes and introductions (critical, social and textual) by Margaret Drabble. Sanditon was written as her own health failed and was never completed. The Watsons hails from 1804 or so while the family was at Bath and was laid aside when the death of her father robbed her of motivation. Lady Susan was written when she was near twenty, in the epistolary style favoured by the 18th Century but quickly given up in the next. Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon is a compendium of Austen’s major unpublished and unfinished works, discounting her juvenilia.

It’s an unusual place to start with Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), but you can’t say no to free books, I find.

Lady susan jane