Sanditon

In her final incomplete novel, Sanditon (written in 1817), Jane Austen explored her interest in the oral construction of a society by means of a town ? and a set of families ? that is still in the process of being formed. The manuscript for Sanditon was originally titled "The Brothers," likely after the Parker brothers in the story. After her death, her family renamed it "Sanditon." It is the third novel of Austen's named after a place; the other two, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park are about ancestral homes and families to which the heroine must assimilate herself. But the people of ?modern Sanditon? (pg 22), as Austen calls it, have moved out of the ?old house ? the house of forefathers? (22) and are busily constructing a new world in the form of a modern seaside commercial town. The town is less of an actual reality than it is an ideal of the inhabitants ? one that they express in their descriptions. These inhabitants have a conception of the town?s identity and of the way in which this identity should be spread to, and appreciated by, the world:

External links

• Jane Austen Information Page
• Jane Austen Center, Bath, England