Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon: Jane Austen

`I am tired of submitting my will to the caprices of others-of resigning my own judgement in deference to those to whom I owe no duty, and for whom I feel no respect.`

The unfinished fictions collected here are the novels and other writing that Jane Austen did not publish. The protagonist of the earliest story is Lady Susan, a sexual predator and a brilliant and manipulative sociopath. The Watsons, a tale of riches to rags, is set in a village deep in mud and
misery where the Watson sisters waste away, day after dull day, waiting for the suitors who never appear. Sanditon, the novel interrupted by the author`s death, is a topical satire on the niche marketing campaign waged by investors in the latest seaside resort, the fictional Sanditon, situated on
England`s over-supplied south coast. If The Watsons shares the disturbed life of a Chekhov short story, Sanditon`s cast of eccentrics anticipates the zany world of Dickens. Experimental and sharp-elbowed, all three probe new areas of invention and push out beyond what we expect to find in a novel
by Jane Austen.

This edition collects together all Austen`s unpublished adult fiction, poetry, and related writings, written in her late teens, in her late twenties, and in the year she died, aged forty-one. They contribute more than a dash of discomfort to our modern image of the romantic novelist and reveal Jane
Austen`s development as a writer.