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Archive for the ‘Lady Susan’ Category

Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan has never received much attention in comparison to her other six major novels. It is a short piece, only 70 pages in my edition of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen: Minor Works containing forty-one letters and a conclusion. Scholars estimate that it was written between 1793-4 when the young [...]

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I write only to bid you farewell, the spell is removed; I see you as you are…You know how I have loved you; you can intimately judge of my present feelings, but I am not so weak as to find indulgence in describing them to a woman who will glory in having excited their anguish, [...]

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Here is a collection of bon mots, quotes and quips from Lady Susan. Even though Jane Austen wrote this epistolary novella in her late teens, she had already developed a keen eye for language and the witty retort that she would later be famous for in her mature novels. Enjoy! 
I take London in my way to [...]

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I must warn you of one thing – – do not let Frederica Vernon be made unhappy by that Martin. He wants to marry her; her mother promotes the match, but she cannot endure the idea of it. Reginald De Courcy Letter 23
Quick Synopsis 
Catherine Vernon writes to her mother delighted that Lady Susan and Reginald’s [...]

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Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan has never received much attention in comparison to her other six major novels. It is a short piece, only 70 pages in my edition of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen: Minor Works containing forty-one letters and a conclusion. Scholars estimate that it was written between 1793-4 when the young [...]

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Her neglect of her husband, her encouragement of other men, her extravagance and dissipation, were so gross and notorious that no one could be ignorant of them at the time, nor can now have forgotten them. Sir Reginald De Courcy Letter 11
Quick Synopsis 
Sir Reginald De Courcy writes to his son alarmed by his serious attachment [...]

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I would ask you to Edward Street, but that once he forced from me a kind of promise never to invite you to my house; nothing but my being in the utmost distress for money should have extorted it from me. I can get you, however, a nice drawing-room apartment in Upper Seymour Street, and [...]

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In 1805, Jane Austen transcribed a fair copy of an untitled manuscript that would later be named Lady Susan by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh and published in 1871 in the second edition of his book A Memoir of Jane Austen. This was the first publication of an Austen early manuscript. The text however, was [...]

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We are now in a sad state; no house was ever more altered; the whole party are at war, and Manwaring scarcely dares speak to me. It is time for me to be gone. Lady Susan, Letter 2 
Quick Synopsis 
Lady Susan accepts her brother-in-law Charles Vernon’s invitation to Churchill. She will deposit her daughter Frederica at [...]

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Welcome 
Over the next two weeks we shall be delving into Lady Susan, one of Jane Austen’s most surprisingly wicked novels. Often overlooked by scholars and readers, Lady Susan has lately become the bonus novel tacked on by publishers eager to entice buyers into purchasing yet another edition of Jane Austen’s Complete Novels, now beefed up from [...]

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