Lady Susan.

A charming and utterly unscrupulous young widow descends on her relations' country house, trailing scandal, and sets about arranging marriages, her own and her daughter's, entirely to suit her own advantage.

What it's about

Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel, told through the letters its characters write about one another. At its centre is Lady Susan Vernon, a beautiful, clever and calculating widow who plays admirers and family against each other while attempting to marry off her reluctant daughter to a wealthy fool. Through the letters, her schemes, her charm and the alarm she provokes unfold with wicked comic momentum.

Themes

The novella dissects manipulation, female power and the marriage market with cool amusement, exposing the gap between social politeness and private cunning. It plays with reputation, self-interest and the limited weapons available to women in a world that prized them chiefly as wives, letting its antiheroine wield those weapons with unusual candour.

Why it still matters

An early, lesser-known work, Lady Susan shows Austen experimenting with the letter form and creating a heroine unlike any other in her fiction, cynical, seductive and unrepentant. It offers a fascinating glimpse of the young novelist's wit before the great books, and stands as a sharp, funny gem in its own right.

Who it's for

For Austen readers eager for something outside the familiar six novels, for lovers of epistolary storytelling and social comedy, and for anyone who enjoys a heroine clever enough to be gloriously bad.