Lady Susan by Jane Austen

It is obvious that this is an early work, and in fact Lady Susan was written when Austen was in her teens. It’s the story of the widowed Lady Susan, her sixteen year old daughter Frederica, and the friends and family upon whom Lady Susan imposes herself. She is a dreadful and immoral woman, utterly beautiful and charming, but a nasty piece of work. She flirts outrageously, leads men into thinking they can marry her and all the while carries on an affair with a married man. She tries to manipulate her daughter into marrying a man she doesn’t love. And so on and on as Austen begins her exploration of the themes that will reach their full maturity in later works: love, how society works, morality and immorality, the way people manipulate one another. And of course even in this early piece her language is wonderful. It’s a delightful piece of work, extremely short but funny and charming. It’s written as a series of letters between the main characters, which limits the perspective she can show, but is obviously experimental as well. There’s also a strong sense of naughtiness in it – I imagine just writing about this wicked Lady Susan was a bit of risk in itself.