Jane Austen

A young country woman visits a fashionable seaside resort and gains insight into the complexities of human nature.

Sanditon

A new Penguin English Library edition of Jane Austen's tantalizing final work - set to be a major Andrew Davies ITV adaptation this autumn Written in the last months of Austen's life, Sanditon features a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators in a newly established seaside resort, and shows the author contemplating a changing society with scepticism and amusement. It tells the story of Charlotte Heywood, who is transported by a chance accident from her rural hometown to Sanditon, where she is exposed to the intrigues and dalliances of a small town determined to reinvent itself - and encounters the intriguingly handsome Sidney Parker. This edition also includes the early epistolary novel Lady Susan and the delightful fragment The Watsons.

Helen 

Juliette Shapiro

In a completed version of Jane Austen's unfinished manuscript, a young country woman visits a fashionable seaside resort and gains insight into the complexities of human nature.

Jane Austen's Unfinished Masterpiece Completed

"Sanditon was a second wife and four children to him, hardly less dear, and certainly more engrossing. He could talk of it forever. It had indeed the highest claims; not only those of birthplace, property, and home; it was his mine, his lottery, his speculation, and his hobbyhorse; his occupation, his hope, and his futurity."
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Sanditon occupies a rather interesting place in literature. Written just before the author's death and never completed past chapter 11, it is the last of the impressive works of the literary master Jane Austen. 
So, it is with a bit of disappointment and wonder that I write this review: disappointment, because we will never truly know Austen's full vision for the story; and wonder, because it has led to an incredible opportunity for creative adaptations on behalf of contemporary authors.
With devious plots for inheritance, grand gestures of romance and favoritism, general snobbery, a hilarious lack of self-awareness, and a high number of hypochondriacs, Austen's Sanditon clearly holds the potential for another classic.
Shapiro's imagined continuation of the story, however, feels considerably less graceful, less subtle, but nonetheless highly entertaining. I couldn't shake the feeling that Shapiro's Sanditon was more rushed where I believe Austen would have relished to write in length, and it was too detailed and overtly scandalous where Austen might have only alluded to or glossed over in tact. The adaptation felt a bit off balance in relation to Austen's classic style. However, it was a very entertaining read from start to finish with moments to make me laugh out loud.
If you enjoy stories of secret love, misunderstandings, scoundrels, disingenuous relatives, and hidden identites to sweep you away for a short while, this book might be the one for you.

Austen's Sanditon 5/5
Shapiro's Sanditon 3/5

Kate Riordan

In the vein of Downton Abbey, Jane Austen's beloved but unfinished masterpiece-often considered her most modern and exciting novel-gets a spectacular second act in this tie-in to a major new limited television series. Written only months before Austen's death in 1817, Sanditon tells the story of the joyously impulsive, spirited and unconventional Charlotte Heywood and her spiky relationship with the humorous, charming (and slightly wild!) Sidney Parker. When a chance accident transports her from her rural hometown of Willingden to the would-be coastal resort of the eponymous title, it exposes Charlotte to the intrigues and dalliances of a seaside town on the make, and the characters whose fortunes depend on its commercial success. The twists and turns of the plot, which takes viewers from the West Indies to the rotting alleys of London, exposes the hidden agendas of each character and sees Charlotte discover herself... and ultimately find love.

This wasn't what I was expecting, I was a little disappointed in the ending, but I enjoyed it well enough!

Laura Webster

Set in 19th-century England, this engrossing novel satirizes the pretentiousness and duplicity in relationships. Austen's death did not allow her to complete this entertaining piece and it was later finished by another writer.

Wilde

More of a social commentary than a novel, but interesting nonetheless.

Ren Christina

I read all of this in hopes of getting that Sidney Parker content, only for him to be mentioned a few times and appear 8 paragraphs before the end of Austen's manuscript. My disappointment is immeasurable but I cannot fault Jane for she passed before she could write more.

Thank every single god for the show and I'm hoping a second season happens, because I cannot live in a world where Sidney & Charlotte aren't endgame. 

As the manuscript stands, it's very charming and Charlotte is a darling protagonist.

Destini Baylis Adams

Why did Jane Austen have to die before she finished this! As an avid Austenite, I am so in love with this unfinished work. I could see Austen's improvement- I know I didn't think it was possible!-as a writer. There was so much description laced with humor and frameworks for I know what would have been fascinating characters. I wonder how Austen's work would have adapted to the ever growing Industrial Revolution on the horizon and I was wondering why Ms. Lambe was "half mulatto" - was Austen intending to comment on race and the slave trade? So many unanswered questions!

Tija

Megan Lowe

A stunning new Clothbound Classics edition of Jane Austen's tantalizing final work - set to be a major Andrew Davies ITV adaptation this autumn Written in the last months of Austen's life, Sanditon features a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators in a newly established seaside resort, and shows the author contemplating a changing society with scepticism and amusement. It tells the story of Charlotte Heywood, who is transported by a chance accident from her rural hometown to Sanditon, where she is exposed to the intrigues and dalliances of a small town - and encounters the intriguingly handsome Sidney Parker. This edition also includes the early epistolary novel Lady Susan and the delightful fragment The Watsons.

Hannekei

Erin Darlyn

Erica Darcy

Vilandra

Sanditon (1817) an unfinished novel by Jane Austen Synopsis: A gentleman and a lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex coast which lies between Hastings and Eastbourne, being induced by business to quit the high road and attempt a very rough lane, were overturned in toiling up its long ascent, half rock, half sand. The accident happened just beyond the only gentleman's house near the lane-a house which their driver, on being first required to take that direction, had conceived to be necessarily their object and had with most unwilling looks been constrained to pass by. He had grumbled and shaken his shoulders and pitied and cut his horses so sharply that he might have been open to the suspicion of overturning them on purpose (especially as the carriage was not his master's own) if the road had not indisputably become worse than before, as soon as the premises of the said house were left behind-expressing with a most portentous countenance that, beyond it, no wheels but cart wheels could safely proceed. The severity of the fall was broken by their slow pace and the narrowness of the lane; and the gentleman having scrambled out and helped out his companion, they neither of them at first felt more than shaken and bruised.Sanditon (1817) is an unfinished novel by the English writer Jane Austen. In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel she called The Brothers, later titled Sanditon, and completed eleven chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817, probably because of her illness. R.W. Chapman first published a full transcription of the novel in 1925 under the name Fragment of a Novel.Analysis and background: The people of "modern Sanditon", as Austen calls it, have moved out of the "old house - the house of [their] forefathers" and are busily constructing a new world in the form of a modern seaside commercial town. The town of Sanditon is almost certainly based on Worthing, where Jane Austen stayed in late 1805 when the resort was first being developed, while there is persuasive evidence that the character of Mr Parker was inspired by Edward Ogle, Worthing's early entrepreneur, whom Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra knew. Quotes: "My name perhaps... may be unknown at this distance from the coast - but Sanditon itself - everybody has heard of Sanditon, - the favourite - for a young and rising bathing-place, certainly the favourite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex; - the most favoured by nature, and promising to be the most chosen by man." (Sanditon) Jane Austen works also includes: NovelsSense and Sensibility (1811)Pride and Prejudice (1813)Mansfield Park (1814)Emma (1815)Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)Persuasion (1818, posthumous)Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)Unfinished fictionThe Watsons (1804)Sanditon (1817)Other worksSir Charles Grandison (adapted play) (1793, 1800)[p]Plan of a Novel (1815)Poems (1796-1817)Prayers (1796-1817)Letters (1796-1817)Juvenilia - Volume the First (1787-1793)[q]Frederic & ElfridaJack & AliceEdgar & EmmaHenry and ElizaThe Adventures of Mr. HarleySir William MountagueMemoirs of Mr. CliffordThe Beautifull CassandraAmelia WebsterThe VisitThe MysteryThe Three SistersA beautiful descriptionThe generous CurateOde to PityJuvenilia - Volume the Second (1787-1793)Love and FreindshipLesley CastleThe History of EnglandA Collection of LettersThe female philosopherThe first Act of a ComedyA Letter from a Young LadyA Tour through WalesA TaleJuvenilia - Volume the Third (1787-1793)EvelynCatherine, or The Bower

A Novel by Jane Austen

Noha Abdelaziz

madison

Laura Porch

Eloise

Edizione integrale Traduzione di Daniela Paladini Trasformare la tranquilla cittadina di Sanditon in una stazione balneare alla moda: è questo il sogno di Mr Parker, imprenditore entusiasta e determinato. Charlotte, figlia di un proprietario terriero della zona, è l’eroina di questo romanzo: è tentata dall’idea di Mr Parker ma al tempo stesso comprende le ragioni del padre, restio al grande cambiamento. Sidney Parker è invece il personaggio maschile positivo, interessato al nuovo ma senza l’eccesso caricaturale del fratello. Sarà lui l’uomo giusto per Charlotte? Il manoscritto di Sanditon fu abbandonato da Jane Austen il 18 marzo 1817, esattamente quattro mesi prima della morte. Era già malata da un anno, ma questo testo non reca tracce di dolore o pessimismo e, sebbene incompiuto, è un chiaro frutto del genio comico che da sempre attraversa la sua vena narrativa.Jane Austennacque a Steventon (Hampshire) nel 1775. Condusse una vita tranquilla, tra gli affetti familiari, a Bath e poi a Chawton, sempre nell’Hampshire. Si spense nel 1817 a Winchester. Di Jane Austen la Newton Compton ha pubblicato Mansfield Park, Ragione e sentimento, Persuasione, Orgoglio e pregiudizio, L’abbazia di Northanger, Emma, Lady Susan – I Watson – Sanditon e il volume unico Tutti i romanzi.

erica

Anne Telscombe

Another Lady

In a completed version of Jane Austen's unfinished manuscript, a young country woman visits a fashionable seaside resort and gains insight into the complexities of human nature

Sanditon

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