[fantasyfan]

This collection is one every Jane Austen fan should have. It is a collection of a very early novel, two fragments of other novels, and other material in manuscript. Of enormous value in putting this content in perspective are the valuable textual and explanatory notes and the brilliant introduction by the editor, Kathryn Sutherland. We also get a Select Bibliography and A Chronology of Jane Austen.

“Lady Susan” is quite early and often now included in collection of the novels, Unlike the other items in the collection, it is not in manuscript form but rather in a “fair copy” which was probably intended for family and friends rather than publication. LS uses the epistolary technique of developing a plot through sequences of letters. Sutherland notes that this method was already falling out of favour by the time this short work was written. Jane Austen’s earlier works also used this method and it is noteworthy that the conclusion shifts to an external narrator who rather succinctly polishes thing off. It is no masterpiece but has some quite interesting features well developed by Sutherland. One wonders if the lost early versions of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” used the epistolary form. Think, for instance, of the important part letters play in “Pride and Prejudice”.


With “The Watsons” (1804-05) we are into something much more typical of an Austen novel. It exists only in a manuscript which shows a great deal of work with many deletions and additions. Sutherland notes that it promises a darker world and a very different sort of heroine who seems a forerunner of Fanny and Anne in the later novels. There is an emphasis on economic issue and the vulnerability of women who depended on marriage as their only option.

Why was it never finished? Sutherland thinks that it might be owing to the fact that the plot was too close to incidents in Jane Austen’s life. Sutherland feels that this fragment “marks a turning point in Austen’s way of writing. It suggests, unusually, Austen experimenting with biography as fiction.” Something new and darker is found in this work that will ultimately lead to Fanny of “Mansfield Park” and Anne of “Persuasion”. But it could be that Austen herself had not reached the level of artistic maturity and depth of experience to be able to develop the story in its fullness.

“Sanditon” however is very different. It is not a fragment of experimentation but a “novel in the making, broken off only by illness and death.” Professor Sutherland feels it is something very different than the previous works of the author. She asserts that it breaks “new fictional ground so extraordinary that its unfinished state is not its most obvious feature.” The novel deals with the economics and “. . . the change that narrow commercialization will work upon social relations; the dangerous erosion of an older moral economics based on mutual obligation.” Austen’s style is “written in a radically new, impressionistic style.”

The editor explores this idea thoroughly and vividly in a number of various ways through incident and character. I believe she makes a good point case for believing that this last unfinished work has the making of a masterpiece which will leave the reader full of questions.
She concludes:

“ ‘Sanditon is a satire about the contemporary craze for seaside holidays; it is also a study of people who imagine they are ill, written by a woman we know was dying. To us she appears to be shadow boxing with and laughing at death. . . . As light and funny as it is, this unfinished fiction is Austen’s most poignant work.’”

The three items above are of great interest but the volume has a number of other manuscripts which are also well worth examining.They are:

Opinions of Mansfield Park
Opinions of Emma
Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters
The Verses of Jane Austen
Appendix: A Poem, and Sermon Scrap
A Chronology of Jane Austen
A Select Bibliography

Finally there are superb Explanatory and comprehensive Textual notes

Anyone interested in Jane Austen’s work should get this brilliantly organised work by Professor Kathryn Sutherland