'no person could be really well . . . without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year'

In Sanditon, Jane Austen writes what may well be the first seaside novel: a novel, that is, that explores the mysterious and startling transformations that a stay by the sea can work on individuals and relationships. Sanditon is a fictitious place on England's south coast and the obsession of local landowner Mr Thomas Parker. He means to transform this humble fishing village into a fashionable health resort to rival its famous neighbours of Brighton and Eastbourne.

In this, her final, unfinished work, the writer sets aside her familiar subject matter, the country village with its settled community, for the transient and eccentric assortment of people who drift to the new resort, the town built upon sand.  If the ground beneath her characters' feet appears less secure, Austen's own vision is opening out.  Light and funny, Sanditon is her most experimental and poignant work.

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Features

• This edition includes an introduction, and notes and bibliography.
• An Introduction that emphasizes what is experimental and new in Austen's last work in comparison to her previous novels.
• The text has been newly transcribed from the manuscript and draws upon the Oxford Edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, 5 vols. (OUP, 2018), which in turn is based on the digital edition of 2010; both edited by Kathryn Sutherland.
• The text draws on Austen's sister Cassandra Austen's transcription for specific editorial features in order to make the work accessible to the general reader and to highlight the novel's early history in family performance.
• The edition has full notes, identifying and explaining literary allusions, references to diseases and contemporary medical treatments, Regency fashions, quasi-specialist language, etc.

ABOUT THE SERIES

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Jane Austen
Sanditon
Explanatory Notes

Jane Austen

Edited by Kathryn Sutherland.

Kathryn Sutherland is the editor of Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections and Jane Austen's Teenage Writings for the Oxford World's Classics. She has created a digitial edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts (2012), the print edition published by OUP in 2017. She is the author of Jane Austen's Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood (OUP, 2005).

"A terrific introduction by Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English Literature at St Anne's College, goes further in explaining the rage of the seaside during Austen's life time, but also how it allows Austen here to conjure up a cast of colourful, uncertain characters as tangy as vinegary fish and chips." - Richard Lofthouse, Quad

"Light and funny, it's Austen's most experimental and poignant work." - Angela Wintle, Sussex Life