Overview

Sanditon is Jane Austen’s last novel, unfinished when she died in 1817. A comedy, it continues the strain of burlesque and caricature she wrote as a teenager and in private throughout her life. In her ground-breaking essay, Todd contextualizes Austen’s life and work, Sanditon’s connection with Northanger Abbey (1819) and Emma (1816), Jane Austen’s insecurity of income and home, and the Austen family’s financial speculations. She examines the work’s discussion of the moral and social problems of capitalism, entrepreneurship, and growing tourism, and their effect on traditional values and rural communities. Todd explains the early nineteenth-century culture of self: the exploitation of hypochondria, health fads, seaside resorts, and miracle cures. Arguing that Sanditon is an innovative, ebullient study of human beings ’ vagaries (rather than using common sense, Sanditon’s characters follow intuition and bodily signs), she shows Austen’s themes to be akin to contemporary concerns about self-obsession and the culture of narcissism, as well as a comic study of the gap between how we think of ourselves and how we appear and sound to others.

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9781909572218

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Monumental, powerful, learned... sets the standard Frank Kermode, London Review of Books Essential for anyone with a serious interest in Austen ... rendered with razor-sharp clarity for a modern audience - exceptionally useful Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies, Georgetown University, Notes & Queries Intelligent and accessible Times Literary Supplement Easy to read and engaging, excellent on Austen's work. Choice Todd has a good ear for tone and a deep understanding Emma Donoghue Janet Todd is one of the foremost feminist literary historians writing now Lisa Jardine, Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University of London, Independent on Sunday David Alan Williams The title, authorship and far famed editor would alone grant this profound, delightful, useful, original and informative volume entitlement to a five-star rating. The light of a positive multiverse of stars is hidden under what must therefore be a considerable bushel. The excellent essay, is illustrated on a scale, big enough to be useful, mostly in full colour. The selections from Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank in particular give the book the appearance of being a series of appropriately saucy seaside picture postcards to us from Jane Austen's Sanditon. By putting the manuscript into its proper historical, cultural, social, political, artistic, and not least her personal and family contexts, the essay reveals the complexity and originality of what Jane Austen was attempting in writing Sanditon. The book concludes with an overview of the significant continuations and completions of Sanditon, including film and television adaptations that have yet to appear, and even appeals for more. To all Austen/Sanditon enthusiasts, and many more possibly aspiring to join them, this book is surely nothing less than indispensable. Lastly Fentum Press are to be congratulated on the quality of the book production. There is a finely judged balance, even a physical one, between the essay and the text of Sanditon. The book size chosen causes it to fall naturally into the hand. There is a pleasant correlation between mass and weight. Therefore, of all of the editions of Sanditon that I possess, this is the one which I now find to be the most enjoyable to read. (The Ebook) is also illustrated in full colour. It works very well on Kindle Fire, Kindle for PC, IPad and Android Tablets, and on laptops. The illustrations are larger than in the hardcover version, and just as much fun.

Monumental, powerful, learned... sets the standard Frank Kermode, London Review of Books Essential for anyone with a serious interest in Austen ... rendered with razor-sharp clarity for a modern audience - exceptionally useful Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies, Georgetown University, Notes & Queries Intelligent and accessible Times Literary Supplement Easy to read and engaging, excellent on Austen's work. Choice Todd has a good ear for tone and a deep understanding Emma Donoghue Janet Todd is one of the foremost feminist literary historians writing now Lisa Jardine, Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies, Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University of London, Independent on Sunday

Author Information

Janet Todd (Radiation Diaries, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, A Man of Genius, Lady Susan Plays the Game) is a leading scholar and editor of Jane Austen's work. The General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen, editor of Jane Austen in Context, and author of The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, she is a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, a novelist, biographer, and literary critic, she is an Emerita Professor at the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, University of Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). She is completing her third novel, Don't You Know There's a War On? (2019) and lives in Cambridge and Venice.

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