Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon

Lady Susan, with its wicked, beautiful, intelligent, and energetic heroine, is a sparkling melodrama that takes its tone from the outspoken and robust 18th century.

Written later, and probably abandoned after her father's death, The Watsons is a tantalizing and highly delightful story whose vitality and optimism centers on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town.

Sanditon, Jane Austen's last fiction, is set in a seaside town; its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.