Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
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... Continue Reading →
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,... Continue Reading →
This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer. The Narrator, The Conclusion, Lady Susan The Postal Service in 18th Century Britain: Letters and the Penny-Post At Jane Austen’s World As the characters in... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City has the largest collection of Jane Austen’s personal letters and manuscripts in the world. Among the collection is the manuscript of Lady Susan. We are very fortunate that the Morgan had the foresight to acquire and retain these items as a collection after the Austen family decided to... Continue Reading →
There are some great writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these. Margaret Drabble I love this quote by Austen scholar Margaret Drabble. It is the opening line of her introduction... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
