Lady Susan

Lady Susan, an epistolary novella named by Jane Austen after its main character, is in many ways an outlier, not just within the author’s own work; we would struggle to find a parallel for the titular heroine in perhaps the whole of nineteenth-century literature.

After all, this recent widow is not only beautiful, but also eminently intelligent and witty, independent and unbridled; she can turn the heads of significantly younger suitors; she overwhelmingly triumphs over her own young daughter in games of love; and although she is about thirty-five years old (which, in the contemporary view, was far from young), one of the male protagonists rightly describes her as “the most accomplished coquette in England”… as if he already knew that his condemnation would soon turn to enchantment.

Lady Susan craves the admiration of men and the envy of women, as well as wealth and social standing; yet she also longs for love and passion. Forty-one letters from the masterful pen of Jane Austen describe—from various points of view, made possible by alternating writers and addressees—intrigue, flirtation, adoration, joy, and sorrow. The author herself was unlucky in love and remained unmarried—and perhaps it is thanks to this that she became such a perceptive observer of human souls that we read her depiction of moments of love and hate with bated breath and a trembling heart. Moreover, this novella is an authentic testament to the family and social bonds that are born—and die—in the hectic life of London and in the only seemingly timeless world of aristocratic country seats.