Other editions of book Lady Susan

Austen's "most wicked tale," Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871. Lady Susan is a selfish, attractive woman, who tries to trap the best possible husband while maintaining a relationship with a married man. She subverts all the standards of the romantic novel; she has an active role, she's not only beautiful but intelligent and witty, and her suitors are significantly younger than she is.

After Jane Austens earliest known writings, she began a more serious work, Lady Susan, in 1793 or 1794. It is a short, epistolary novel that portrays a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction. Lady Susan, a clever and ruthless widow, determines that her daughter is going to marry a man whom both detest. Lady Susan sets her own sights on her sister-in-laws brother, all the while keeping an old affair simmering on the back burner. But people refuse to play the roles assigned them, and in the end her daughter gets the sister-in-laws brother, the old affair runs out of steam, and all that is left for Lady Susan is the man intended for her daughter, the one neither can abide. Jane Austen ended this work abruptly with the comment: “this correspondence…could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer.”

Lady Susan is the only full novel written by Jane Austen that was not published in her lifetime. Composed in the epistolary form that was popular at the time, the novel is a series of letters primarily between Lady Susan, Mrs Vernon, Mrs Vernon's mother (Lady de Courcy), Lady Susan and Mrs Johnson. The central character is remarkable in Austenian terms as she has nearly no redeeming features. A gorgeous, clever and witty woman, Lady Susan uses her talents for thoroughly selfish ends as she scrupulously scours society searching for "appropriate" husbands for herself and for her daughter.

How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About A Memoir Of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen published by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives. Composition: In the late 1860s, the Austen family decided to write a biography of Jane Austen. The death of Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving sibling, and the ageing of those who had any memory of her prompted the family to gather their papers and to begin recording their memories. Public interest in Jane Austen was also developing and the family became concerned that an outsider or another branch of the family would produce a biography. James Edward Austen-Leigh, as the son of the eldest branch, "in a spirit of censorship as well as communication", thus began the project. With the help and support of his sisters and Jane Austen's nieces, he collected materials. The biography was largely the work of James Edward Austen-Leigh, his half-sister Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen Lefroy and, his younger sister Caroline Mary Craven Austen, and their cousin Cassy Esten. As Austen scholar Kathryn Sutherland points out in her "Introduction" to the Oxford edition of the Memoir, however, Austen-Leigh's biography is specific to the Steventon or Hampshire Austens, for whom Jane Austen is "nature-loving, religious, domestic, [and] middle class". The Godmersham or Kentish Austens viewed Jane Austen as more "inward and passionate...gentrified, improved willy-nilly by contact with her fine relations".Moreover, as Caroline wrote, "the generation who knew her is passing away".Much of the biography is based on the memories of those who had only known Jane Austen when they were children and she was their older aunt; the rest is based on written records passed down through the family. As Sutherland explains, "the major ingredients of the Memoir, as well as its reverent colouring, are owed, in one way or another, to Cassandra Austen."Cassandra was the executor of Jane's will and was responsible for the preservation and destruction of all remaining letters and manuscripts after Jane's death.According to Caroline Austen, one of Jane Austen's nieces, Cassandra "looked [the letters] over and burnt the greater part, (as she told me), 2 or 3 years before her own death—She left, or gave some as legacies to the Nieces—but of those that I have seen, several had portions cut out".Thus, while writing the Memoir, Austen-Leigh did not have access to large numbers of Jane Austen's letters. Furthermore, the rest had been scattered as bequests; a complete collection of Jane Austen's letters was only gathered in 1932.

Questo breve romanzo epistolare fu pubblicato postumo nel 1871, ma si suppone che sia stato scritto presumibilmente nel 1794. Certamente si ritrovano tutti i temi e i colori dell'autrice: l'ironia per le ipocrisie dei formalismi della società la lotta contro i matrimoni d'interesse, e il sarcasmo contro le donne manipolatrici e fredde di cuore. Lo stile inconfondibile della scrittrice, quieto, ironico fino a rasentare il cinismo, di una lucidità geniale nell'osservazione del suo piccolo mondo, rende questo breve romanzo un piccolo gioiello, per gli estimatori dei suoi romanzi. Cornice musicale: "Haydn, London trio n. 1"