I am a Jane Austen completist, having read all six full-length novels authored by her (some of them being reread multiple times): Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. However, one novel that almost always escapes public attention is ‘Lady Susan’. At 180 pages, it is not considered by many to be a full-length work but more of a novella, and is hence never listed among the above-mentioned renowned novels.

‘Lady Susan’ happens to be the only epistolary novel written by Jane Austen in her adulthood. (Some of her younger works collected under ‘Juvenilia’ include a couple of epistolary stories.)
An epistolary novel, just in case you aren’t aware of the term, is a novel where the entire story is revealed through correspondence from/between the characters. The usual form of correspondence is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings, blogs, and e-mails have also been incorporated into epistolary books. (Case in point: The Martian by Andy Weir which mainly uses v-log entries)

The epistolary novel was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries but due to much satirical ridicule, it slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century. Jane too abandoned the epistolary structure after ‘Lady Susan’. (Some think that her lost novel ‘First Impressions’, which was redrafted to become ‘Pride and Prejudice’, may have been epistolary; after all, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ contains an unusual number of letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot. ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was also originally written in the epistolary form.)

Now let’s come to ‘Lady Susan’. Supposedly written in 1794 but not published until 1871, this lovely little novella describes the schemes of the eponymous lead. If you think Emma was the most selfish of all lead female Austen characters, wait till you meet Lady Susan. Devious to the core, her only concern is with establishing her own comforts even if at the cost of her own daughter’s happiness. She is not your typical goody-two-shoes Victorian heroine but a sugar-coated Machiavelli who keeps trying to manipulate everyone and everything as per her requirement. Being an epistolary novel, the entire book except for the last chapter unfurls through letters written by some character to another.

Considering that Jane Austen wrote this at about 20 years of age with the lead character at age 35, it's really an undervalued piece of writing. It’s amazing to see how the virginal Austen portrayed a villainous heroine without having even experienced the brutalities of the world. The only downside to the book is that aforementioned last chapter. The story goes that Jane wrote all the letter parts at 20, kept the idea of the book aside thereafter, and some years later, in a desire to complete the book, wrote the final chapter. That time lag is pretty evident in the hurried nature of that chapter, the sole purpose of which is to tie up everything together and end the story somehow. This results in an abrupt, rushed ending, deviating from the overall flow and yes, affecting your reading experience too. If you can forgive this flaw, Lady Susan will work its charms on you.

Jane Austen never submitted ‘Lady Susan’ for publication. Maybe she just wrote it as an experiment, or maybe she didn’t consider it a good enough story. No one will ever know her thoughts about this book. But reading this novel is an insightful experience into the mind of the young Austen, who is still a hugely popular and beloved author more than 200 years after her death.
The only movie adaptation of Lady Susan, retitled ‘Love & Friendship’ after Austen's juvenile work of that name, stars Kate Beckinsale in the titular role. While not a box office hit, it received critical acclaim and is considered among the better Jane Austen screen adaptations. In other words, safe to watch. :D

Fun fact: The manuscript of Austen's Lady Susan is the only surviving complete draft of any of her novels.

My copy of the book has two more books included. Here’s a very brief insight into the remaining two works.
The Watsons - A book that Jane started in 1805, then abandoned after the death of her father. The few chapters she had written show her usual ability to build up the characters. It is regretful that she didn’t complete this book. It would have been a great read. The story is a bit like a mix of Sense & Sensibility and Emma, but as it's incomplete, we shall never know what Austen planned for it.

Sanditon - Begun by Jane a few months before her death, Sanditon shows Jane's obsession with good health at that stage of her illness. With a good start to the story, the book uses the then-prevalent ideas of the benefits of seaside places to build up this place called Sanditon, the ultimate coastal town for health care. With just eleven chapters written before she abandoned it due to worsening health, one can’t really pass any comment on Sanditon except for wondering what a loss it was to Janeites.



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A long-time Austen fan, I'd long meant to read her unpublished (in her lifetime, anyway) works, but kept putting it off, not knowing what to expect. As it turns out, I enjoyed the experience even more than I'd hoped. Lady Susan is such a turn from Austen's morally upright and good hearted heroines, you never know if you are rooting for or against her, but it is FUN. The two unfinished works, The Watsons and Sanditon have that bittersweet tang of wishing you could know what Austen would have ultimately done with them, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to glimpse them just the same. ( )

Förutom de sex romaner som hennes litterära framgång bygger på finns av Jane Austen även åtskilligt annat bevarat: förutom skolövningar och brev även tre romanfragment (ehuru ett av dem av författaren försetts med en snabb avrundning), några dikter, samt en del kortare texter. Oxford World's Classics har samlat allt detta i en enda volym, under titeln Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon.

Den första av de tre fragmenten är den som i alla fall fått en avrundning: Lady Susan är ett ungdomsverk, skriven på ett brevformat som Austen nog visste själv var gammalmodigt. Huvudpersoner är en vacker, manipulativ nybliven änka på väg mot fyrtio: utan alltför mycket pengar, med en dotter hon avskyr och en önskan att hitta en karl som har pengar och är villig att bortse från äktenskapliga övertramp (eller i andra hand dum nog att inte se dem). Hon hamnar hos sin ordentliga svåger, och ställer till det i familjen. Främst användbar för att bli av med tron på Austen som en särdeles pryd person, och kanske alltmer omöjlig att färdigställa i takt med att sederna blev strängare, så framstår den ändå som relativt läslig.

The Watsons skrevs i början av karriären, när hon visserligen sålt manus till Northanger Abbey men denna sedan inte publicerats: man hinner möta de flesta medlemmar i denna fattiga familj, där en dotter återvänder hem efter att ha uppfostrats hos en farbror men där hans änka nu gift om sig. En ganska dyster historia, med besvärande omständigheter för huvudpersonen: man ser släktskapet med framför allt Förnuft och känsla, men delar skulle också bli förlagor till delar i andra verk.

Sanditon, slutligen, påbörjades men kunde inte färdigställas då sjukdomen som tog Austens liv kom emellan. Det är den märkligaste av texterna: hjältinnan är en ganska färglös observatör, utrustad med gott omdöme men helt överskuggad av de närmast Dickensartade figurerna som rör sig runt den uppåtsträvande badorten Sanditon: en entusiasisk investerare, dennes en övernitisk ungmö till syster, en snål gammal dam, en ung man som förläst sig och tror sig vara en anti-hjälte. Definitivt ett fragment man önskat kunde fått avslutas. ( )

Lady Susan: I thought this epistolary novella was brilliantly done, considering its length. Austen did a great job at depicting the characters in just letters, and the drama was interesting and kept me turning the pages. This one was probably my favorite of the three.

The Watsons: This one was meh. I know it was incomplete, but it reminded me of a combination of Mansfield Park and Emma which are my two least favorite complete novels. Not very memorable.

Sanditon: I was shocked at how underdeveloped this story was. I knew it was incomplete, but I didn’t realize it was that incomplete. I had watched the show before reading it, and I think the show was well down considering how little they had to work with. I definitely think I would’ve liked Sanditon more if it has been complete, and if the romance had been able to play out completely.

And hence completes my reading of Austen’s works. This took over a year, but it was definitely worth it. I had a great time, and I found some new favorite books along the way. ( )

I read Lady Susan five years ago, and I finally read Sanditon this time. Because I plan on checking out the Masterpiece television drama based on Austen's last novel, I wanted to read the batch of chapters she finished before she died.

I also wanted to get a glimpse of Miss Lambe, the only Black/mixed race character Austen ever created. ( )