Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

Oxford World's Classics

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.

Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

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.

Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

Oxford World's Classics

Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

Oxford World's Classics

Author Information

Jane Austen

Edited by Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism, St Anne's College, Oxford

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).

Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

Oxford World's Classics

Reviews and Awards

"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." - Richard Lofthouse, Quad

"Light and funny, it's Austen's most experimental and poignant work." - Angela Wintle, Sussex Life

Sanditon

Jane Austen
Edited by Kathryn Sutherland

Oxford World's Classics

From Our Blog

Continuing Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon

Unfinished works tease us. They come with baggage. They cling to their authors whose lives, in turn, weigh heavy upon them. Why were they broken off? How might they be continued?

Posted on September 14, 2019

Read the blog post