Later Manuscripts
The Collector's Edition

This unique volume includes all Austen's unpublished mature work. It is an enlightening companion to the finished novels.

Jane Austen (Author), Janet Todd (Edited by)

9781009432818, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 May 2025

272 pages
20.9 x 13.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

Gathering together all the unpublished mature work of Jane Austen, this volume comprises poems, a novella, unfinished novels, literary spoofs and a series of letters giving advice on how to write fiction. Written between her childhood tales and published novels, 'Lady Susan' is the most complete portrait of clever, charming malice Austen ever penned. With its special bleak atmosphere, 'The Watsons' is a powerful satire of claustrophobic middle-class life, while 'Sanditon', the work she was writing when she died, is an experimental novel exchanging Austen's usual country-house setting for a speculative seaside resort. Along with the poems (the last written just three days before her death), the letters and comic pieces, the novel fragments are beguiling on their own; they also provide a fascinating companion to the published novels. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate the cultural, historical and literary context, bringing Jane Austen's world to life.

The Manuscript Novels: Lady Susan
The Watsons
Sanditon
Jane Austen on Fiction: To Mrs Hunter of Norwich
Letters on Fiction to Anna Lefroy
Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters
Poems and Charades: Poems
Charades.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]