Audiobook · read by volunteers
Lady Susan (version 2)
Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Read by Brenda Dayne, Shelly Brisbin, Kevin Cade, Sage Tyrtle, Jim Milles, Dreama Lynn, Heather Ordover · 42 chapters · 2 h 41
About the book
Lady Susan Vernon is beautiful, clever, newly widowed and entirely without scruples. Arriving at her brother-in-law’s country house after a scandal elsewhere, she sets about charming everyone within reach, finding a rich husband for herself and, if all goes well, an equally suitable one for her daughter. The novel is told entirely in letters, and the pleasure lies in watching how differently she writes to each correspondent, sweetly to some, coolly to others, and with remarkable frankness to her closest friend. Jane Austen wrote it in her youth and never published it, and it is sharper and more openly wicked than her better-known books. In forty-two short letters and chapters, read by seven volunteers across less than three hours, you will meet one of fiction’s great manipulators. Be prepared for a heroine you will love to dislike.
Introduction
Jane Austen, who lived from 1775 to 1817, is celebrated for novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Lady Susan belongs to her earlier work. She wrote it in the mid-1790s but never published it, and it appeared only long after her death, in 1871, when it was included in a memoir of the author by her nephew.
The story is a short epistolary novel: it is told through letters sent between characters, and there is only a little connecting narrative at the end. This form lets Austen show her skill at character in an unusual way. We see Lady Susan not through an observer but through her own words, which change according to the person she is writing to. Her selfishness, her pursuit of affairs and her scheming to find husbands for herself and her daughter are clear, yet she is also intelligent and entertaining, and she is one of the most memorable of Austen’s creations. Others in the cast are revealed through their reactions to the letters they receive.
This LibriVox recording is the second version of the book on the site. It has forty-two short chapters, mostly individual letters, and lasts about two hours and forty minutes. Seven volunteers share the reading, including Brenda Dayne, Shelly Brisbin and Kevin Cade. For anyone who thinks they know Austen already, this is a bracing surprise. Its brevity, its brilliant villainess and its sly humour make it one of the most accessible ways into Austen’s early imagination.
Public domain
Jane Austen died in 1817: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text