Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/36

  and Evelina should be attracted by this style, but, in spite of some successes, it is doubtful if it could form a good vehicle for an every-day story, and it certainly was not suited to Jane Austen's manner of writing. She had not then, however, realised her own powers, or perfected her own inimitable style, and she persevered long enough with the letter-writing to compose at least two complete novels in it. One of these, Elinor and Marianne, she afterwards re-wrote completely, converting it from the letter form into ordinary narrative, and published it in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility. The other story. Lady Susan, which was much shorter, she never altered, but apparently did not like it enough to attempt publishing it, and for years after her death it was unknown to the public, as well as to most of her own family.

At some former time she had given the autograph copy of the story to a favourite niece, Fanny Austen (afterwards Lady Knatchbull, mother of the present Lord Brabourne). Another niece, Mrs. Lefroy, had taken a copy of the story for herself, and through these two ladies the existence of Lady Susan became known, so that more than sixty years after the author's death it was published for the first time. No one knows its exact date, but it is evidently a juvenile production, and her family believe that it is the earliest specimen of her writings which has yet appeared in print.

It is a short story, dealing, as was the writer's wont, with only two or three families; but except for this, it is scarcely suggestive of her later style, and is curiously deficient in all humour or playfulness, for which, indeed, the dimensions of the story do not give much