Is Sanditon Worth Finishing?

I started it and did not find those things I enjoy in reading Austen.

I enjoyed it, with reservations. I reviewed it here (beware of some spoilers): http://www.librarything.com/review/47516757

Great review, oh Wisewoman--I gave you another thumbs up. Now I may read that one someday.

That's very helpful, wisewoman, thanks. It sounds like it gets much more interesting after the early part where I stopped.

"Is Sanditon Worth Finishing?"

Austen didn't think so.

Ha, you have a point there, cpg.

Thanks for the kind comments on my review! I was glad I read the book, though it didn't quite meet up to Austen's usual standard. I don't want to get too spoilery, but it just got kind of... wild at the end. Though how it played out *was* strongly hinted in the chapters Austen herself wrote.

I learned to appreciate Sanditon because I read a fanfiction called The Three Brothers, available to read online here. It's very well done and I wound up loving Sidney and gave me a whole new appreciation for the real thing. Give it a try, this author is very good and one of the tops in JA fanfiction.

"Is Sanditon Worth Finishing?"

Austen didn't think so.

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Erm...she was dying.

>8 ncgraham: "Erm...she was dying."

Aren't we all?

>9 cpg: "'Erm...she was dying.'

Aren't we all?"

Obviously a Glass-Half-Empty person....

The serious point behind my wisecrack was, of course, that you can't finish reading Sanditon because Austen didn't finish writing it. Should you read the entire extant fragment? If you're a completist, I guess you should. It is, after all, only 70 pages long--a quarter of the length of, for example, Edwin Drood, another literary fragment that, in my opinion, is much more satisfying. And Drood's popularity rivals that of several of Dickens' completed works, while the number of copies of Sanditon on LT is a tiny fraction of the number of copies of her least popular finished novel.

Thanks for the interesting comments. I've read the fragment, but wondered whether the novel as completed by another was worth finishing. Thank you for the helpful review, wisewoman!

It was finished by someone else. The copy I have names the rest of it being written by "Another Lady".
I really enjoyed it. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember not being able to really tell where Austen stopped and Another Lady began. Read it, any Austen fan would like it, at least respect it, if not thoroughly enjoy it.

>13 jenieliser: "It was finished by someone else."

Well, several different people did write continuations of it. See Wikipedia for a list. I won't concede that they finished it, though.

Interesting. Well, like I said-the copy I own is a nicely done completion of it. I'm sure it probably isn't exactly as Austen would have had it done, but who knows...? It was still an enjoyable read.

The continuation (which itself was not completed) that was of the greatest interest was the one written by Anna Austen, Jane Austen's literary niece.