Penguin Classics: Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon

'Lady Susan', with its wicked, beautiful, intelligent and energetic heroine, is a sparkling melodrama which takes its tone from the outspoken and robust eighteenth century. Written later, and probably abandoned after her father's death, 'The Watsons' is a tantalizing and highly delightful story whose vitality and optimism centre on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town. 'Sanditon', Jane Austen's last fiction, is set in a seaside town and its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.