I’m slowly making my way through Jane Austen’s body of work: first up was Emma, then Pride And Prejudice. I couldn’t make up my mind which to read next… until the universe made it up for me. The wonderful folks at Oxford University Press were kind enough to send me a copy of Sanditon for review. Never heard of it? Not surprising! Only the die-hard Austen fans really have. It’s the partial manuscript, her final effort, the one she was working on when she died, aged just 41.

(Want to keep up with this one? Just so you know, when you use an affiliate link on this page to make a purchase, I earn a tiny commission!)
If you take a look at the original manuscript (images are available, with transcription, open access at janeausten.ac.uk – good on them!), you can actually trace the timeline of Austen’s writing process. She began Sanditon on 27 January 1817, wrote twelve chapters, then set it aside on 18 March that year. She wrote to her niece a few days later, complaining that she felt unwell, and her condition deteriorated quickly. The unfinished novel, some 24,000 words, sat in a drawer and wasn’t published until more than a century after her death (in 1925). The title comes from the fictional seaside township she created for the story, Sanditon, though that title was applied retroactively (Austen herself never actually decided on a title for the manuscript). It was likely based on the real town of Worthing, where Austen stayed in 1805.
If someone handed you Sanditon without a cover or title page, you probably wouldn’t recognise it as one of Austen’s books. It’s set by the sea, for one thing, moving away from her traditional country-village settings and impoverished-gentry family homes. It may well be the first “seaside novel”, a short tradition in English lit that came after Austen’s time. It’s more than the setting, though, that sets Sanditon apart. Austen was clearly in the mood to mix things up. It starts with a bang, right in the middle of the action, where her novels would have usually begun with a bit of background information or family history (yes, we’re all thinking of “it’s a truth universally acknowledged” here).
She was drawing on a combination of the burgeoning trend for seaside holidays – resorts were capitalising on the reputation of fresh air and salt water bathing for “health” – and the site of cultural revolution that they represented. Here was a setting where the female body, so strictly policed in Austen’s world (real and fictional), was freed from its usual constraints. These towns had floating populations and attracted a variety of characters from all over, which gave her an opportunity (or would have, I guess) to explore new dynamics and new opportunities for humour and critique.
Austen didn’t stray too far from her repertoire, though: Sanditon was still intended to be a social satire, as best we can tell, a commentary on the ridiculousness of the craze for seaside holidays. It is also, in some ways, a gentle ribbing of hypochondriacs, people wealthy and privileged enough to imagine illnesses and cures, written by a woman who (we now know) was dying.
It all starts (with a bang, as I said) when the carriage of Mr & Mrs Parker topples over near the home of the Heywoods. Mr Parker is injured, and the carriage all kinds of buggered, so the couple stays with the Heywoods for a fortnight until everyone’s ready to get back on the road. Mr Parker speaks very fondly of Sanditon, a former fishing village; he and his business partner, Lady Denham, have designs on opening a fashionable seaside resort there.
Charlotte Heywood is the eldest daughter still living at the Heywood home (and, again as best we can tell, she was all set to become the main character). When Mr Parker and his carriage are ready to go, she tags along with them, and stays with the Parkers in Sanditon as a summer guest. There, she meets the locals, including Mrs Denham – a twice-widowed woman who got her fortune from her first husband, and her title from the second (wink-wink). She has some scheming and opportunistic family members (it is still an Austen novel, remember) hoping to secure her estate.
It’s a strong set-up, but unfortunately the Sanditon manuscript ends before Austen had the chance to lay everything out properly. More characters are introduced – like Mr Parker’s two sisters, self-declared invalids, and a brother – but the novel cuts off before they can be fully developed and their roles revealed. Still, Austen has just enough time to work in a few zingers.
“I am very sorry you met with your accident, but upon my word you deserved it.–Going after a Doctor!–Why, what should we do with a Doctor here? It would be only encouraging our servants and the Poor to fancy themselves ill, if there was a Doctor at hand.”
Sanditon, page 35
And a pro health tip from Arthur: take your toast with a “reasonable” quantity of butter, because dry toast will ravage your stomach lining like a “nutmeg grater”. True fact!
Because Austen laid all the ground-work with Sanditon, it’s been a favourite of “continuators” – later writers who tried to complete the novel and emulate her style (her niece, Anna Lefoy, among them). That means there are a few different versions of Sanditon floating around, but my OUP edition is the OG: edited by Kathryn Sutherland (who has worked on a whole bunch of Austen projects), and presented faithfully to Austen’s original work. That means it’s a slim book (it is, after all, unfinished, and ends abruptly in the middle of Chapter 12), but it’s beautifully produced, with a well-researched author biography, introduction, and notes.
Ultimately, Sanditon reads like what it is: a first draft of an incomplete novel. There’s enough of Austen’s natural talent and brilliance there to make it worth reading, but also enough to bum you out – it is terribly, terribly sad that this work will forever remain unfinished (continuators be damned). Still, I appreciated this little window into Austen’s mind, and the opportunity to see the machinations that came before her formally polished and published prose.
My favourite Amazon reviews of Sanditon:
- “ “I am everything Jane Austin”!” – Gloria Groot
- “didnt finish” – Joan Strochak
- “This is not the complete book, only the section Jane Austen wrote” – C. Jones
- “Slow to start but got better near the end …..” Kaya Penelope
- “Disappointed with ending, author seems to have tired of writing and abruptly ends the story.” – Teri Jensen
August 11, 2020 at 12:00 PM
As someone who has written five novels, I find it awful that this was not just left alone. A first draft is a very private thing and I hate that this has been published and plummeted. Jane would be horrified to know her impartial first draft was now available alongside her finished works. I’ve never read it and I’m just not sure if I can, as though I would be betraying her!
August 12, 2020 at 9:39 AM
Completely understand the reluctance to read it! I’d shudder if the first draft of an EMAIL was made publicly available, let alone a manuscript 😅 Still, I couldn’t resist the lure of this one – the chance to see the last step in Austen’s evolution was just too great a temptation for me. 😬
August 12, 2020 at 4:53 PM
See I’d be on the opposite bench, I hate unfinished things, people love ruins because they are ruins, I want them put back how they should have been. If I was to spend the time I would definitely be reading one of the attempts at a finished version. Halting in chapter 12 would irritate me.
August 13, 2020 at 8:34 PM
Ah, yes, I can completely understand that. I didn’t feel frustrated by the abrupt ending so much as saddened by it – all the places it could’ve gone! It feels like such a waste that the world lost Austen so young and so early in her writing life.
August 15, 2020 at 2:02 AM
Oh, man. As a writer, the idea of anyone seeing the first draft of my work is horrifying. However, I think Austen’s other novels, and their impact upon literature, speak well enough to her talent that one can overlook any flaws peppering that first draft. 😉 No need for shame there! I think it’s actually fascinating to have that first draft available! It’s awful she wasn’t able to finish it, especially for that particular reason. Again, as a writer, dying mid-work is a concern, haha. I’m sure George R. R. Martin feels similarly. I’m just grateful we have what we do from her!! I watched the TV show of Sanditon, which I enjoyed, but I’m really curious to know how much of the first episode was true to what Austen wrote, and how much was made up. I’ve heard that everything pretty much past episode 1 is made up.
August 17, 2020 at 12:55 PM
I’ve heard the same re: the TV show, which makes sense – there’s not really enough plot to keep it going longer than an episode, I’d think!