![]() ![]() ![]() The Watsons, begun in 1804 but never completed, tells the story of a young woman, Emma Watson, who was raised by a rich aunt and is suddenly shipped back to the comparative poverty and social clumsiness of her own family: girls explicitly on the hunt for husbands. The country-bred heroine, the handsome baronet who models himself after irresistible seducers he has met in novels, the family of hypochondriacs, the mysterious West Indian heiress, and others, play out their satirical or romantic or melodramatic roles against a background hum of real-estate development: modern times loom. The setting is a seaside town that is being promoted as a resort. Its subject matter astonishes: here is Austen observing the birth pangs of the culture of commerce. ![]() Sanditon is the novel she was working on in the last year of her life. Treasure was found, and all of it is in this volume that rounds out the Everyman's Library edition of Jane Austen. When the English-speaking world fell in love with Jane Austen's six great novels, hungering for more, the hunt began, of course, for any unpublished manuscripts she may have left behind. ![]()
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