When I read about Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, a new novel based on Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan, I got a total Austen adrenaline rush. Due out next October from Crown Publishing Group, we will finally have a novel based on Austen’s brilliant and vicious jewel. Here is the description. 

A delightful interpretation of Jane Austen’s early novella Lady Susan – a treat for fans of literature’s most beloved woman of letters, as well as historical fiction readers. 

Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan was written during the same period in which she produced Elinor and Marianne. Like Elinor and Marianne, Lady Susan focused on the economic and romantic plights of two heroines displaced when the family home passes to an unworthy heir; but while Elinor and Marianne was revised and happily expanded to become Sense and Sensibility, Lady Susan was abandoned. Until now. 

In Lady Vernon and her Daughter, Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway have taken letters from this novella and transformed them into to a vivid, authentic, and more recognizably “Austen” milieu. Lady Susan Vernon and her daughter must navigate a society where a woman’s security is at the mercy of an entail, where love is hindered by misunderstanding, where marriage can never be entirely isolated from money, and yet romance somehow carries the day. 

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Crown (October 6, 2009)
ISBN: 978-0307461667 

Not only is this an interesting concept, it is written by a mother – daughter team, mirroring the two main characters in Lady Susan. Here are their bios from their literary agent Marly Rusoff & Associates website who continue to have an eagle eye for fresh Austen inspired talent after they hit a home run with Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict in 2007. 

Jane Rubino holds a BA from NYU in Dramatic Literature, Theatre and Cinema. She lives in Ocean City, NJ and is the author of a contemporary mystery series set at the Jersey shore, and a volume of Sherlockian novellas. She has also written several short screenplays that have been produced as student and independent films; one of the films was recently awarded a jury prize at San Francisco’s annual WYSIWYG Film Festival. 

Caitlen Rubino-Bradway holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Publishing from Rosemont College. While in college, she interned with LeFrak Productions, Tor, and Jane Dystel Literary. She currently lives and works in New York City, where she has attended the Monday “day after” dissections, sponsored by the Jane Austen Society of North America, of the most recent series of Austen teleplays. 

Both avid readers of Austen, Caitlen and Jane re-examined her six great novels in order to reproduce Austen’s distinctive style and apply the fundamentals of her storytelling to expand this short work into novel length. Lady Vernon and her Daughter, while retaining much of the original text, restores Lady Susan and Frederica Vernon to a vivid, authentic, and more recognizably “Austen” milieu: much like the Dashwood’s (Sense and Sensibility), the Bennet sisters (Pride and Prejudice), and Anne Elliot (Persuasion), Lady Susan Vernon and her daughter must navigate a society where a woman’s security is at the mercy of an entail, where love is hindered by misunderstanding, where marriage can never be entirely isolated from money, and yet romance somehow carries the day. 

Can’t wait to learn more about this one! If we can judge this book by its beautiful cover, then we may have another winner from this literary agency.

Pre-order Lady Vernon and Her Daughter at Amazon.com

Read Lady Susan by Jane Austen online at Mollands

Listen to an audio sampler of Lady Susan at Naxos AudioBooks