Lady Susan, the Watsons and Sanditon

This collection brings together three shorter works from different stages of Jane Austen’s career. Lady Susan is an epistolary novella about a recently widowed woman who manipulates relatives, admirers and her own daughter while pursuing financial and social security. The Watsons follows Emma Watson as poverty narrows her choices after she returns to a difficult family she barely knows.

Sanditon, left unfinished at Austen’s death, moves to a speculative seaside resort promoted by the enthusiastic Mr Parker. Through invalids, investors and visitors, the fragment examines health fashions, property development and the unstable social order of a town attempting to manufacture its own importance.