“Lady Susan”: Jane Austen’s First Work of Significant Length

Jane Austen’s “Lady Susan” is intriguing if only for the format it is written. Austen chose to write the novel as a series of letters between the people involved in the plot. This approach is interesting to me for a couple reasons: first, there is no narrator; second, we become intimately familiar with all the players without ever having a description of them. We get a clear sense of their motivation by reading their correspondence with those closest to them.

What I will say in criticism is that the ending has not been fully fleshed out. Understandably so, as Austen never intended for the novel to be published. Had she herself put it forward for publication I’m sure more attention would have been put on the details of the conclusion. That being said, the ending was rather unsatisfactory. The reader is not given much indication at all of what happens to the characters they have become attached to.