Nonplused, she moves on to her next residence the country estate of her deceased husband’s younger brother Charles Vernon and his wife Catherine. Manwaring for engaging at the same time, the affections of two men who were “ not at liberty to bestow them,” namely her husband, and the fiancé of her young sister-in-law. The gossip mill claims that while staying as a guest at Langford, she was evicted by its Mistress Mrs. There is more than a breath of scandal preceding Lady Susan’s arrival at her in-laws estate of Churchill. Described by her sister-in-law Catherine Vernon as “ delicately fair” possessing “ an uncommon union of symmetry, brilliance,” these positive attributes may be the only compliments that she receives in the whole novel. The story centers around its titular character, Lady Susan Vernon, a very recent widow in her mid thirties. The manuscript would remain unpublished until 54 years after her death with its inclusion in the appendix of her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography of his aunt, A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1871. In 1805, she transcribed a fair copy of the manuscript but did not pursue publication in her lifetime. Scholars estimate that it was written between 1793-4 when the young author was in her late teens and represents her first attempts to write in the epistolary format popular with many authors of her time.

It is a short piece, only 70 pages in my edition of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen: Minor Works containing forty-one letters and a conclusion. Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan has never received much attention in comparison to her other six major novels.

Lady susan by jane austen