Lady Susan, the Watsons, Sanditon: Jane Austen

Collecting three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century`s greatest authors, Jane Austen`s Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon is edited with an introduction by Margaret Drabble in Penguin Classics.

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine Emma Watson finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride. Written in the last months of Austen`s life, the uncompleted novel Sanditon, set in a newly established seaside resort, offers a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators, and shows an author contemplating a the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution with a mixture of scepticism and amusement.

Margaret Drabble`s introduction examines these three works in the context of Jane Austen`s major novels and her life, and discusses the social background of her fiction. This edition features a new chronology.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature`s most famous women writers. Austen began writing at a young age, embarking on what is possibly her best-known work, Pride and Prejudice, at the age of 22. She was also the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park.