Lady Susan

<p><strong><em>Lady Susan</em> is Jane Austen's sharp early epistolary novel of charm manipulation marriage strategy and social performance.</strong> Written in letters and centred on one of Austen's most brilliantly unscrupulous heroines the novel follows Lady Susan Vernon a beautiful and recently widowed woman who uses wit flirtation calculation and emotional pressure to manage lovers relatives reputation and her daughter's future.</p><p>Unlike the more morally balanced heroines of Austen's mature novels Lady Susan is dangerous because she understands society perfectly and exploits its rules without embarrassment. The result is a compact and unusually acidic work: part comedy of manners part social satire part study in female power operating within narrow eighteenth-century constraints. For readers of Jane Austen classic English fiction epistolary novels and Regency-era social comedy <strong><em>Lady Susan</em></strong> offers a fascinating glimpse of Austen's early brilliance and the darker intelligence behind her later novels.</p>