Sanditon

By (author) Austen, Jane; Edited by Sutherland Kathryn
Short description/annotation
One of Jane Austen''s final uncompleted novels, started in the January the year she died. Perhaps Austen''s most original work, stepping away from the mystique of the country estates. This edition includes an introduction, notes and bibliography
Description
''no person could be really well . . . without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year'' In Sanditon, Jane Austen writes what may well be the first seaside novel: a novel, that is, that explores the mysterious and startling transformations that a stay by the sea can work on individuals and relationships. Sanditon is a fictitious place on England''s south coast and the obsession of local landowner Mr Thomas Parker. He means to transform this humble fishing village into a fashionable health resort to rival its famous neighbours of Brighton and Eastbourne. In this, her final, unfinished work, the writer sets aside her familiar subject matter, the country village with its settled community, for the transient and eccentric assortment of people who drift to the new resort, the town built upon sand. If the ground beneath her characters'' feet appears less secure, Austen''s own vision is opening out. Light and funny, Sanditon is her most experimental and poignant work.
Table of contents
Introduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Jane Austen Sanditon Explanatory Notes
Review quote
A terrific introduction by Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English Literature at St Anne''s College, goes further in explaining the rage of the seaside during Austen''s life time, but also how it allows Austen here to conjure up a cast of colourful, uncertain characters as tangy as vinegary fish and chips.
Review quote
Light and funny, it''s Austen''s most experimental and poignant work.
Biographical note
Kathryn Sutherland is the editor of Austen-Leigh''s Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections and Jane Austen''s Teenage Writings for the Oxford World''s Classics. She has created a digitial edition of Jane Austen''s Fiction Manuscripts (2012), the print edition published by OUP in 2017. She is the author of Jane Austen''s Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood (OUP, 2005).
Publisher''s notice
Kathryn Sutherland is the editor of Austen-Leigh''s Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections and Jane Austen''s Teenage Writings for the Oxford World''s Classics. She has created a digitial edition of Jane Austen''s Fiction Manuscripts (2012), the print edition published by OUP in 2017. She is the author of Jane Austen''s Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood (OUP, 2005).
Feature
This edition includes an introduction, and notes and bibliography. An Introduction that emphasizes what is experimental and new in Austen''s last work in comparison to her previous novels. The text has been newly transcribed from the manuscript and draws upon the Oxford Edition of Jane Austen''s Fiction Manuscripts, 5 vols. (OUP, 2018), which in turn is based on the digital edition of 2010; both edited by Kathryn Sutherland. The text draws on Austen''s sister Cassandra Austen''s transcription for specific editorial features in order to make the work accessible to the general reader and to highlight the novel''s early history in family performance. The edition has full notes, identifying and explaining literary allusions, references to diseases and contemporary medical treatments, Regency fashions, quasi-specialist language, etc.
Version history
This edition includes an introduction, and notes and bibliography. An Introduction that emphasizes what is experimental and new in Austen''s last work in comparison to her previous novels. The text has been newly transcribed from the manuscript and draws upon the Oxford Edition of Jane Austen''s Fic