Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon

These three works - one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments - reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist. Lady Susan with its wicked beautiful intelligent and energetic heroine is a sparkling melodrama in letters that takes its tone from the outspoken and robust 18th century. Written later and probably abandoned after her father's death The Watsons is a tantalising and highly delightful story of vitality and optimism which centres on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town. Sanditon her last work left unfinished at her death is set in a seaside town. Its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.