Lady Susan

Jane Austen’s earliest known serious work Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel that portrays a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction.

Lady Susan a clever and ruthless widow determines that her daughter is going to marry a man whom both detest. She sets her own sights on her sister-in-law’s brother all the while keeping an old affair simmering on the back burner.

But people refuse to play the roles assigned them. In the end her daughter gets the sister-in-law’s brother the old affair runs out of steam and all that is left for Lady Susan is the man intended for her daughter whom neither can abide.

Told through a series of letters between the characters the work concludes abruptly with the comment: “this correspondence…could not to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue be continued any longer.”