Sanditon [unfinished]

As thanks for nursing his sprained ankle after a carriage topple, Mr. Tom Parker and his wife invite young country girl Charlotte Heywood to summer with them in Sanditon, a developing beach town that the Parkers are invested in (in more ways than one). Charlotte meets the rest of the Parker family - Tom's handsome brother Sidney and their hilariously hypochondriac sisters and brother - as well as the rich widowed financier of Sanditon, Lady Denholm, and the various relatives trying to get their hands on her fortune.

I read this along with watching the current PBS adaptation, because I was interested to compare the two and see how much of the show was directly from the original text and how much was new. This fragment has almost no plot - show more it's mostly just Charlotte hearing about people and then meeting them. But boy is it riotously funny! Charlotte is, to this point, fairly passive and mostly just observes the world around her. In true Austen heroine fashion she lets the buffoons around her speak for themselves. There are several scenes I would have loved to see in the tv show, such as one where hypochondriac Arthur Parker tells Charlotte that if he drinks any green tea his whole right side gets paralyzed for hours, and Charlotte tells him he should go see a doctor who specializes in right sides and green tea consumption. But I'll have to be content to merely read them here again.

It was an enjoyable read, though the very unedited nature of the draft took some getting used to - there are randomly capitalized words, abbreviations, and misspellings galore. My mind is still reeling to think of the many possible ways Austen could have taken this story. show less

I'm very surprised by how much I loved this. I'd been avoiding it for ages, since it's unfinished, and I thought I'd be disappointed. Not a bit—sure, I'd rather there was more, but it would have been like not eating the free appetizer from Le Bernardin because you prefer an entire meal ... I'd been silly.

I try to explain to friends who say "Jane Austen? I'm not into those romance novels" that Austen is really a hilarious obvious of character, tucked into a romance format, but now I'm just going to hand them Sanditon, where there's no romance at all, but so much delicious prose commentary. She has everyone nailed, and the point-of-view is early-Victorian-bitchy, and it's wonderful. Take this about two fashionable young maidens, the show more Miss Beauforts:

They were very accomplished and very ignorant, their time being divided between such pursuits as might attract admiration, and those labours and expedients of dexterous ingenuity by which they could dress in a style much beyond what they ought to have afforded.

I'm sure I bumped into them yesterday.

It seems churlish to deduct a point because she died, so it's too short and lacks resolution, so I won't. This is top-notch writing at its finest.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve! show less

Sanditon is the last of Jane Austen novels, written right at the end of her life. As such, it is incomplete and unfinished. This is the reason that I had never read Sanditon before now- this is the end of Austen’s writings. This just brings home the fact that she will not be writing anything new for me to read.

The novel shows amazing promise, and cannot help but leave the reader regretting that the story was never finished. The tone of the novel reads as a conglomeration of her previous novels. The hypochondriacal storyline hints at Persuasion, the varied house party brings Mansfield Park to mind, the quirky characters are similar to Emma, the cutting social critique is similar to Northanger Abbey’s, and so the novel reads. Though show more some of the material feels recycled from her other writings, Austen still manages to bring her fresh, breezy style of writing to the storyline.

Some of the elements are new to an Austen novel. The story delves into the male psyche more than any other book of hers. Too, Austen’s approach to “health cures” usually restricts itself to commentary on Bath, so the exploration of Bath-wannabes of the time is interesting to see. Lastly, it is one thing to stand back in the 21st century and critique women for letting their overactive imaginations lead them to imagine illness. It adds another dimension to read a woman of the time critique her own gender, especially since Austen was genuinely ill herself at the time.

The reader will be in no doubt that the story was intended to end happily as all Austen’s novels do- the secret lovers find happiness, inheritances help out those who need money, Sanditon will succeed as a health resort, and the heroine finds someone to give her the perfect life. The good will end well, and the bad will end in disgrace. However, the reader cannot help but regret the loss of those little plot twists and charming character development that only Austen can create on her way to happily ever after.

As to this particular printing, Hesperus printed the edition very nicely. Though it is a paperback, the cover has deep flaps that serve as the perfect bookmarks, and the typeface is the perfect blend between readability and old-fashioned style. Overall, this edition is a nice tribute to the final product of Austen’s unique imagination. show less

Jane Austen started this novel during her final illness. She had only written eleven chapters and part of a twelfth when she died. Although she had already made some revisions to the manuscript, she likely would have made more edits and revisions had she lived to complete the novel. It reads like a draft and doesn't have the polish of her completed works.

A coach accident brings the Parkers of Sanditon into the Heywood home. In gratitude for the family's assistance, Mr. Parker invites Charlotte, one of the Heywood daughters, to return to Sanditon with them. The coach journey provides plenty of time for Mr. Parker to familiarize Charlotte with his siblings; his most distinguished neighbor, Lady Denham; and their joint project to develop show more Sanditon into a seaside resort town. Austen didn't tell readers much about Charlotte in the chapters she completed other than what can be inferred from her opinions of the people she meets. Lady Denham is surrounded by poor relatives eager to secure a legacy in her will. Three of Mr. Parker's four siblings are hypochondriacs who talk incessantly about their infirmities. It seems ironic that Austen's final work centered so much on illness and medical treatments. Would a healthy Austen have written about this topic in this way? Did Austen receive a lot of unsolicited advice as her illness progressed, and was this her way of expressing her irritation? show less

This is a novel fragment of 12 short chapters written by Austen in the last months of her life and presumably abandoned due to her growing ill-health. It sets the scene nicely for an interesting and amusing story featuring an eclectic cast of characters and it is a shame it was never completed. For those watching the current ITV adaptation, the action of these chapters is really all included in the first TV episode, so only the backdrop and characters are as Austen intended.

Note: I read an unfinished edition of Sanditon.

Overall, quite an enjoyable experience, but I was distressed by the brevity of the work. While some might find it fun to imagine where Jane would have gone with this one had she been able to finish it, I think letting it stand on its own is a wise idea.

It may be true, as stated in the foreword, that the author was poking fun at what she inaccurately perceived to be her own hypochondria when she wrote about some of the Parker family. While I was quite amused at the antics of the three character who possessed 'nervous sensibilities,' I also found those parts of the novel to be very bittersweet. Miss Austen was fatally ill while she was writing this and didn't realize it.

I dove right into show more Jane Austen's biography by Claire Tomalin as soon as I finished Sanditon, so it genuinely piqued my interest in her life. In general, I would recommend this book mainly to lovers of Austen. It won't satisfy the casual reader much. show less

I loved the uncompleted fragment by Jane Austen of Sandition we have, and can only mourn that her death meant it's forever incomplete. It had such possibilities! I really liked our heroine Charlotte Heywood, with her obvious intelligence, lack of pretension and good sense. In the eleven chapters of 26,000 or so words we have left to us, Lady Denham and the three Parker hypochondriac siblings strike me as brilliant comic creations. Then there's Sir Edward Denham, who models himself after rakes like Richardson's Lovelace and schemes to seduce, and if not abduct, Clara, his rival for Lady Denham's inheritance. Then there's Miss Lambe, "a young West Indian of large fortune," who is "about seventeen, half mulatto, and chilly and tender." show more What an interesting character to find in an Austen novel! I certainly will be trying at least one of the completions by other hands, although I expect I'll sadly be disappointed. In terms of what's on the page I'd rate this five stars to be honest. It gets only three because I can't imagine anyone but us hardcore Austen fanatics or scholars wanting to read an incomplete novel.

Edit: For what it's worth, I loved the 1975 completion by "Another Lady." No, I'm not saying she's Austen's equal. But she tacked on her story seamlessly from where Austen ended, developed the characters very nicely, seemed to get the period details right, and I ended reading the story with a smile. show less