Lady Susan

by Jane Austen Narrated by Susan McCarthy, Laurellee Westaway, Bobbie Frohman, David Thorn, Melissa Leventon

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

One of the first stories Jane Austen ever published, yet just as sharp and satirical as you’d expect from her. This epistolary novella is just as brilliant as all the other Austen you love.

Written in the then fashionable style form of letters between the characters in the book, Jane Austen tells the story of the beautiful widow Lady Susan. Lady Susan has an eye toward re-marrying well, and marrying off her teenage daughter. To achieve her objectives, she spins a tale of Victorian humor and manipulation. In the end, she outsmarts even herself.

Jane Austen's earliest known serious work, Lady Susan is a short, epistolary novel that portrays a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction.

Lady Susan, a clever and ruthless widow, determines that her daughter is going to marry a man whom both detest. She sets her own sights on her sister-in-law's brother, all the while keeping an old affair simmering on the back burner. But people refuse to play the roles assigned them. In the end, her daughter gets the sister-in-law's brother, the old affair runs out of steam, and all that is left for Lady Susan is the man intended for her daughter, whom neither can abide.

Told through a series of letters between the characters, the work concludes abruptly with the comment: “this correspondence...could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer.”

The Letters:
Letter 01: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. Vernon
Letter 02: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 03: Lady Susan Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 04: Mr. de Courcy to Mrs. Vernon
Letter 05: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 06: Mrs. Vernon to Mr. de Courcy
Letter 07: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 08: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 09: Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 10: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 11: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 12: Sir Reginald de Courcy to His Son
Letter 13: Lady de Courcy to Mrs. Vernon
Letter 14: Mr. de Courcy to Sir Reginald
Letter 15: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 16: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 17: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 18: From the Same to the Same
Letter 19: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 20: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 21: Miss Vernon to Mr. de Courcy
Letter 22: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 23: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 24: From the Same to the Same
Letter 25: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 26: Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 27: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Letter 28: Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 29: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 30: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. de Courcy
Letter 31: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 32: Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 33: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 34: Mr. de Courcy to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 35: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. de Courcy
Letter 36: Mr. de Courcy to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 37: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. de Courcy
Letter 38: Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon
Letter 39: Lady Susan Vernon to Mrs. Johnson
Letter 40: Lady de Courcy to Mrs. Vernon
Letter 41: Mrs. Vernon to Lady de Courcy
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
—Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer

"Small wonders."
—Time Out London

"[F]irst-rate…astutely selected and attractively packaged…indisputably great works."
—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

"I’ve always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it’s the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher’s fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
—The New Yorker

"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed—tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."
—KQED (NPR San Francisco)

"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."
—The Wall Street Journal

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169621587
Publisher:	Alcazar Audio Works
Publication date:	01/01/2003
Edition description:	Unabridged

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