Rethinking Jane Austen's Lady Susan : The Case for Her "Failed" Epistolary Novella

Unfinished Austen examines four texts that Jane Austen left incomplete: Catharine, or the Bower (1792–-3), Lady Susan (1795?), The Watsons (1803–-4?) and Sanditon (1817), none of them published till well after her death. Since very little in manuscript form survives from the six famous novels, these four manuscript texts offer insight into the novelist in the process of creation. They also problematize the romance plot prominent in the published novels by presenting this in a nebulous or incipient state that underlines its artificiality. These texts sometimes show how the romance plot is inflected by the financial condition in which young marriageable women can find themselves. Moreover, the stories (other than Catharine) have aroused the interest of many later writers—including writers for theatre and screen—who are eager to complete or to amplify them. They may do this through developing the stories to some kind of dénouement. Perhaps more intriguingly, however, these texts induce some writers to question the very enterprise of concluding an unfinished text.

***THE NOVEL OF THE HIT INDIE FILM*** 'If, like me, you like your Austen subversive, cruel, funny and outrageous, then you will love Stillman's Love & Friendship' The Times 'Lady Susan is finally getting some long overdue respect' New York Times 'Lady Susan remains deliciously wicked' Vogue With a pitch-perfect Austenian sensibility and wry social commentary, filmmaker and writer Whit Stillman cleverly re-imagines and completes one of our greatest writers' unfinished works. Love & Friendship is a sharp comedy of manners, and a fiendishly funny treat for Austen and Stillman fans alike. JANE AUSTEN'S FUNNIEST NOVEL IS ALSO HER LEAST KNOWN - UNTIL NOW. Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands - and fast. But when her attempts to secure their futures result only in the wrath of a prominent conquest's wife and the title of 'most accomplished coquette in England', Lady Susan must rethink her strategy. Unannounced, she arrives at her brother-in-law's country estate. Here she intends to take refuge - in no less than luxury, of course - from the colorful rumors trailing her, while finding another avenue to 'I do'. Before the scandalizing gossip can run its course, though, romantic triangles ensue. A SPECIAL EDITION FEATURING JANE AUSTEN'S ORIGINAL NOVELLA AS ANNOTATED BY THE NARRATOR. PRAISE FOR LOVE & FRIENDSHIP THE FILM 'A RACY DELIGHT' Guardian ***** 'FIND ME A FUNNIER SCREEN STAB AT AUSTEN, AND I'M TEMPTED TO OFFER YOUR MONEY BACK PERSONALLY' Telegraph ***** 'TREMENDOUSLY WITTY' Independent ***** 'MAY JUST BE THE BEST JANE AUSTEN FILM EVER MADE' London Evening Standard *****

Great Britain is changing, and so is Europe. The aim of this book, therefore, is to reflect upon the processes of (re)creation of art and literature within and against the backdrop of the shifting paradigms of the world as we know it. At a time when the political relations between Great Britain, Europe and the rest of the world are being redefined, this book examines the (de)construction of modern identities through the (de)codification of classical and contemporary mythologies.

After the death of Sir Frederick Vernon, Lady Vernon and her daughter, Frederica, confront the surviving heir of her husband's estate, Charles Vernon, about his treatment of his family. They are faced with Charles's indifference, his wife Catherine's distrustful animosity, and a flood of rumors that threaten to undo them all. Will Lady Vernon and Frederica find love and happiness--and financial security--or will their hopes be dashed with their lost fortune?

Jane Austen and Masculinity is an eclectic collection of contemporary scholarship addressing the representation of men and masculinity in the fiction and popular adaptations of Austen. This anthology includes work by a variety of esteemed and emergent Austen scholars from around the world who engage in a dialogue on critical questions surrounding her fictional treatment of men and masculinity, such as historical (post-French Revolutionary) changes in social expectations for men and women, brothers and fathers, male lovers, soldiers and the military, queer and alternative sexualities, violence, and male devotees of Austen. The collection addresses Austen’s fiction, including her juvenilia, as well as the ongoing popular appeal of her work and the enduring Austen vogue. The work in this anthology builds on established critical discourses in Austen scholarship as well as important conversations in Masculinity Studies.

Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious - and often outrageous - early stories, sketches and pieces of nonsense, in a beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition. Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into human folly, and a preoccupation with manners, morals and money. But they are also a product of the eighteenth century she grew up in - dark, grotesque, often surprisingly bawdy, and a far cry from the polished, sparkling novels of manners for which she became famous. Drunken heroines, babies who bite off their mother's fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these very funny pieces. This edition includes all of Austen's juvenilia, including her 'History of England' - written by 'a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian' - and the novella 'Lady Susan', in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. Taken together, they offer a fascinating - and often surprising - insight into the early Austen. This major new edition is the first time Austen's juvenilia has appeared in Penguin Classics. Edited by Christine Alexander, it includes an introduction, notes and other useful editorial materials. Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. In her youth she wrote many burlesques, parodies and other stories, including a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan. On her father's retirement in 1801, the family moved to Bath, and subsequently to Chawton in Hampshire. The novels published in Austen's lifetime include Sense and Sensibility(1811),Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16, and was published, together with Northanger Abbey, posthumously in 1818. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Christine Alexander is Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales and general editor of the Juvenilia Press. She has published extensively on the Brontës and has co-edited the first book on literary juvenilia, The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf (2005). 'Spirited, easy, full of fun verging with freedom upon sheer nonsense...At fifteen she had few illusions about other people and none about herself' - Virginia Woolf' [Her] inspiration was the inspiration of Gargantua and of Pickwick; it was the gigantic inspiration of laughter' - G. K. Chesterton

Heiress Kamila Mughal is humiliated when her brother's best friend snubs her to marry a social climbing nobody from Islamabad. Roya discovers her fiancé has been cheating on her and ends up on a blind date on her wedding day. Beautiful young widow Begum Saira Qadir has mourned her husband, but is she finally ready to start following her own desires? Inspired by Jane Austen and set in contemporary Pakistan, Austenistan is a collection of seven stories; romantic, uplifting, witty, and heartbreaking by turn, which pay homage to the world's favourite author in their own uniquely local way.

There are numerous ways to understand failure in literature: failure to produce a work of demonstrable literary merit, or failure to publish a work despite such merit; failure to see something translated, adapted or performed adequately, or indeed to see it translated, adapted or performed at all; failure to establish a connection with the contemporary reading public, failure to please critics, or to charm readers and hence the failure to achieve substantial sales. An author or a literary wor...

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager. This collection brings together Jane Austen's earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of her premature death in 1817. Her fragmentary juvenilia show Austen developing her own sense of narrative form whilst parodying popular kinds of fiction of her day. Lady Susan is a wickedly funny epistolary novel about a captivating but unscrupulous widow seeking to snare husbands for her daughter and herself. The Watsons explores themes of family relationships, the marriage market, and attitudes to rank, which became the hallmarks of her major novels. In Sanditon, Austen exercises her acute powers of social observation in the setting of a newly fashionable seaside resort. These novels are here joined by shorter fictions that survive in Austen's manuscripts, including critically acclaimed works like Catharine, Love and Freindship [sic], and The History of England.