Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon

These three short works show Jane Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine Emma Watson finds her marriage opportunities restricted by poverty and pride. Written in the last months of Austen's life, the uncompleted novel Sanditon is set in a newly established seaside resort with a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators, and shows the author contemplating a changing society with a mixture of skepticism and amusement.

Margaret Drabble's introduction examines these three works in the context of Jane Austen's major novels and her life, and discusses the social background of her fiction. This edition features a new chronology.