DOCSLIB.ORG

Sanditon.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Sanditon.Pdf OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS SANDITON JANE AUSTEN was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. The Austens were cultured but not at all rich, though one of Austen’s brothers was adopted by a wealthy relative. Other brothers followed professional careers in the church, the Navy, and banking. With the exception of two brief periods away at school, Austen and her elder sister Cassandra, her closest friend and confidante, were educated at home. Austen’s earliest surviving work, written at Steventon while still in her teens, is dedicated to her family and close female friends. Between 1801 and 1809 Austen lived in Bath, where her father died in 1805, and in Southampton. In 1809, she moved with her mother, Cassandra, and their great friend Martha Lloyd to Chawton, Hampshire, her home until her death at Winchester in 1817. During this time, Austen published four of her major novels: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), visiting London regularly to oversee their publication. Her two final novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were published posthumously in 1818. Sanditon, a new novel, was left unfinished at the time of her death. KATHRYN SUTHERLAND is Professor of English Literature and Senior Research Fellow, St Anne’s College, Oxford. Her recent publications include Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood (2005) and, with Marilyn Deegan, Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print (2009). She is the editor of Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts: A Digital Edition (2010) and the expanded print edition, 5 vols (2018). In the Oxford World’s Classics series she has also published editions of Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet and Waverley, of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections, and of Jane Austen’s Teenage Writings. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS JANE AUSTEN Sanditon Edited with an Introduction and Notes by KATHRYN SUTHERLAND Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Editorial material Kathryn Sutherland 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939271 ISBN 978–0–19–884083–1 ebook ISBN 978–0–19–257753–5 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. CONTENTS Introduction Note on the Text Further Reading A Chronology of Jane Austen SANDITON Explanatory Notes INTRODUCTION THE scene is set. A gentleman and lady (as yet unnamed) are travelling home from London to the south coast. They leave the main road to follow a rough, unmade track. Their carriage overturns. The gentleman scrambles out, helping his companion to safety. He finds he has sprained his ankle. The reason for their diversion: he is looking for a doctor. But the track leads nowhere. There is no road; there is no doctor —dead end on two counts. As beginnings go, this is not encouraging. As the beginning of a novel by Jane Austen, it upsets all our expectations, much like that overturned carriage. We know how her novels open, and it is not like this. Austen’s openings are remarkably similar: biographical, descriptive, and static—a snapshot or tableau introducing a named family or family member, captured at a particular moment in their history before the action starts. Not only does this new novel open with movement, that movement is hazardous and observed with forensic detachment. Warm biographical detail is noticeably withheld. In its place, the reader is offered a police incident report: ‘A Gentleman and Lady travelling from Tunbridge’, ‘The accident happened’, ‘their Driver’, ‘the said House’, ‘the said Proprietor’ (pp. 3– 4). Only one paragraph in, we know that Sanditon will be unlike any other novel Austen wrote. Another gentleman, Mr Heywood, a farmer, witnesses the incident and comes to the assistance of the travellers. They spend the next fortnight, while the ankle heals, among the numerous Heywood family before continuing their journey, taking with them for an extended visit Miss Charlotte Heywood, ‘a very pleasing young woman of two and twenty’ (p. 14). By now we are into Chapter 2, the gentleman has become Mr Parker and the lady his wife, Mrs Parker, and his character, so enigmatically introduced, has been pretty much decided: he is ‘an Enthusiast’ (p. 11). Mr Parker’s enthusiasm (a word with a keener edge then than now) borders upon delusion and is certainly obsessive in nature. His every waking moment, all his energy, and his fortune are dedicated to Sanditon, his home and the fishing village he means to transform into a fashionable health resort. Sanditon is to Mr Parker ‘a second wife and four Children … hardly less Dear—and certainly more engrossing’ (p. 12). The seaside holiday was invented in the eighteenth century, with resorts springing up along England’s extensive coastline, from Blackpool and Scarborough in the north to Brighton and Lyme Regis in the south, to take advantage of the fashion for salt-water bathing. Their attractions were boosted by influential treatises like Dr Richard Russell’s Dissertation Concerning the Use of Sea Water, published in Latin in 1750 and quickly issued in English. Demand for his treatments (he recommended drinking as well as bathing in sea water for a range of glandular ailments) encouraged Russell to build in Brighton in the mid-1750s a substantial residence for the reception of patients.1 By the early 1800s, medical and pseudo-medical books and pamphlets advised sea air and bathing for a surprising variety of diseases—Mr Parker’s faith in their being ‘nearly infallible … for every Disorder, of the Stomach, the Lungs or the Blood’ (p. 13) scarcely exaggerates—and every tourist guidebook had its promotional paragraphs in praise of the unique health benefits of one particular resort or another. John Anderson, Physician to and Director of the General Sea-Bathing Infirmary at Margate, assured his readers, after extensive research among local guides, of bathing being considered ‘a certain specific’ ‘for the bite of a mad dog and other rabid animals’, warning that the patient might bark ‘much like a dog’ when first dipped into the sea.2 As William Cowper, Austen’s favourite poet, put it in 1782: ‘all impatient of dry land, agree | With one consent to rush into the sea’.3 By 1800 seaside holidays were here to stay. Sanditon is a fictitious location on the Sussex coast, a rival in Mr Parker’s besotted view to the longer-established neighbouring resorts of Brighton, Eastbourne, and Worthing. By the late eighteenth century, arguments for the superiority of the Sussex coast—its shelter from northerly winds, the luminosity of its air, and its sunny aspect—were well rehearsed. This is not the first time Austen has imagined her characters by the sea. In her fourth novel, Emma (1816), fearful, complaining Mr Woodhouse disputes with his elder daughter Isabella the pros and cons of two resorts—South End (on the Thames Estuary in Essex) and Cromer (in north-east Norfolk)—for health and sea bathing, their conversation only serving to make Emma, who has never seen the sea, ‘envious and miserable’ (ch. 12). We learn here, too, that it was at Weymouth, a south-coast resort, fashionable since George III patronized it in 1789, that Jane Fairfax first made the acquaintance of Frank Churchill. In Weymouth, Jane narrowly escaped drowning (ch. 19). In Persuasion, finished only months before Sanditon, and published posthumously in 1818, the seaside again proves dangerous when Louisa Musgrove’s foolish leap from the stone breakwater or Cobb at Lyme Regis in Dorset leaves her concussed (ch.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • "THE WORLD's CLASSICS" and "OXFORD WORLD's CLASSICS": a Guide to the Clothbound Editions (And Their Variants)
    Site up-dated: April 16, 2010 "THE WORLD'S CLASSICS" and "OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS": A Guide to the Clothbound Editions (and Their Variants) Compiled by J. Godsey, Geoffrey Milburn and Nicholas Murray With additional contributions by R.B. Bernstein, Roxann Bilger, John Birchall, Brian Butler, Stephen Butler, Katherine Butson, Malcolm Campbell, Steve Czyzowski, Edward Davidson, Richard Ford, Rosemary and Graham Kelsey, Joseph Keogh, Peter Miskech, Albert Robbins, Don Rogerson, Bev Tomlinson, Ian Westbury, Betty F. Wilkinson, Richard Williams, and other correspondents. Edited by Geoffrey Milburn [This guide is currently in draft form; it is incomplete and some details may be incorrect. Please e-mail corrections or additions to: [email protected] All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged.] Information collected in this Guide: C Bibliographic details of clothbound World's Classics volumes (all series). C Details of a variant (including minor variations and textual corrigenda) to a volume. C Volume contents of collections of essays, short stories, plays, etc. C Descriptions of dust-jackets: details of non-standard dj design; details of standard dj design; name of dj artist; description of a unique photo/engraving/typographic feature; colour(s); date; description of special feature (double volume, bio. of author, portrait of author, unique feature on spine, etc.). [See Appendix IV for a list of OWC dustjacket `types'.] Abbreviations in this Guide: Var: = Either a variant in the original series, or an alternative edition in another section
    [Show full text]
  • 'True Use of Reading': Sarah Fielding and Mid Eighteenth-Century
    The 'True Use of Reading': Sarah Fielding and Mid Eighteenth-Century Literary Strategies MIKA SUZUKI Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary and Westfield College University of London 1998 1 [LONDON) Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) establishedher identity as an author. The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of writing and reading. Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people. The dual targets direct her to devise various strategies. She tries to appeal to those who can endorse and appreciate her moral values as well as her learning. Her writings and letters testify that she is sensitive to the demands of the literary market, trying to lead the taste of readers by inventing new forms. The thesis opens with an overview of Sarah Fielding's career, followed by a consideration of her critical attention to the roles of reading. I go on to examine the narrative structures and strategies she deploys, with a particular emphasis on her use of the epistolary method.
    [Show full text]
  • Cata 207 Tillotson.Indd
    Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers 46, Great Russell Street Telephone: 020 7631 4220 (opp. British Museum) Fax: 020 7631 1882 Bloomsbury, Email: [email protected] London WC1B 3PA VAT.No.: GB 524 0890 57 CATALOGUE CCVII SPRING 2014 BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY OF GEOFFREY & KATHLEEN TILLOTSON Catalogue: Helen Smith Production: Carol Murphy & Ed Nassau Lake All items are London-published and in at least good condition, unless otherwise stated. Prices are nett. Items on this catalogue marked with a dagger (†) incur VAT (current rate 20%) to customers within the EU. A charge for postage and insurance will be added to the invoice total. We accept payment by VISA or MASTERCARD. If payment is made by US cheque, please add $25.00 towards the costs of conversion. Email address for this catalogue is [email protected]. JARNDYCE CATALOGUES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, price £5.00 each include: The Shop Catalogue; Books & Pamphlets 1576-1827; The Romantics, Part I: A-C; Catalogues 205 & 200: Jarndyce Miscellanies; Dickens & His Circle; The Dickens Catalogue; The Library of a Dickensian (£20); Social Science, Part I: Politics & Philosophy; Part II: Economics & Social History; Street Literature: II Chapbooks & Tracts; III Songsters, Street Literature Reference Sources, Lottery Tickets & ‘Puffs’; JARNDYCE CATALOGUES IN PREPARATION include: Romantics II: D-R; Conduct & Education; Books & Pamphlets of the 17th & 18th Centuries; PLEASE REMEMBER: If you have books to sell, please get in touch with Brian Lake at Jarndyce. Valuations for insurance or probate can be undertaken anywhere, by arrangement. A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE is available for Jarndyce Catalogues for those who do not regularly purchase.
    [Show full text]
  • 24 Lascelles P111 0874
    MARY LASCELLES Lotte Meitner-Graf Copyright © The British Academy 2001 – all rights reserved Mary Madge Lascelles 1900–1995 MARY LASCELLES was Tutor and Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford, for twenty-nine years, and latterly University Lecturer and then Reader in English Literature at Oxford University. As a literary scholar and critic her particular contributions were to the study of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, and Walter Scott. She was also a poet and sen- sitive witness of the changes in a lifetime which spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century. ‘I was born on the slopes of an extinct volcano in the Caribbean.’1 That is the first sentence of the Memoir she wrote late in her life. Mary Lascelles was born on 7 February 1900, and the volcano in question was on the island of Grenada where her father, William Horace Lascelles, had an estate on which he grew cocoa, limes, and sugar. He was a younger son—the eighth—of the fourth Earl of Harewood. Her mother, born Madeline Barton, was the daughter of a Church of England clergyman who had served as chaplain to the English community in Freiburg. The Revd Gerard Barton came of Cumberland Quaker stock and before his ordination had farmed in Norfolk. Mary was the eldest of the family; twins, Daniel and Pamela, were born two years later. The children did not flourish in Grenada, a fact which Mary attributed in part to diet—orange juice, a product of the island, was then considered unsuitable for children. The family left Grenada when she was three but she loved the recollection 1 Mary Lascelles, A Memoir (privately printed for the author by Smith Settle, Otley, West Yorkshire: 1989), p.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Use of Religious Literature in Late Medieval England
    WOMEN'S USE OF RELIGIOUS LITERATURE IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND Anne Marie Dutton This dissertation is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of York Centre for Medieval Studies October, 1995 ABSTRACT Little scholarly attention has been directed to the subject of women's activities as readers, listeners, and owners of the religious literature circulating in late medieval England. This dissertation examines women's access to and use of such literature from c. 1350 to c. 1500. My main sources are wills and probate inventories (both of which sometimes mention books), and extant manuscripts and incunabula known to have been owned or used by women. I argue that the female audience of religious literature was composed primarily of women religious and laywomen from the nobility and gentry, and, in the fifteenth century, from the mercantile elite. Such women formed networks that facilitated the exchange and sharing of books. Middle English treatises of spiritual guidance addressed to women construct celibate readers, thereby ignoring married women, and thus, to a large extent, laywomen. These writings also attempt to limit women's critical responses to the text. A study of the corpus of religious literature actually in women's hands reveals not only that laywomen and female religious participated in a common literary devotional culture, but also that this culture went beyond what was written or recommended for them. I present two case studies of women book owners - a laywoman, Anne Harling (c. 1426-1498) and a nun, Sibilla de Felton, abbess of Barking from 1394 until her death in 1419.
    [Show full text]
  • SOMERVILLE COLLEGE REPORT 2014-2015 Somerville College Report 2014-15
    SOMERVILLE COLLEGE REPORT 2014-2015 Somerville College Report 2014-15 Somerville College Somerville College Report 2014-15 Somerville College Contents Visitor, Principal, Fellows, Somerville Development Lecturers, Staff 5 Board Members 64 Principal’s Report 10 Somerville Association Officers and Committee 65 Development and Alumni Relations 13 Events: Dates for the Diary 67 Fellows’ and Lecturers' Activities 15 Report on Junior Research Fellowships 20 J.C.R. Report 22 M.C.R. Report 22 Library Report 23 President’s Report 25 Somerville Senior Members’ Fund 26 Horsman Awards 26 Somerville's Great War 27 This Report is edited by Liz Cooke (Tel. 01865 270632; Members’ News and Publications 30 [email protected]) and Alex Monro Marriages 35 Designer: Laura Hart Printer: Hunts Births 35 Photographers: John Cairns, Keith Barnes, Duncan McRae, Somerville College Deaths 36 Archives et al Fonts: Foco by Dalton Maag, Helvetica by Obituaries 37 Max Miedinger Cover: A warm welcome to Somerville : Academic Report 53 Dave Atkins, Deputy Lodge Manager Visitor, Principal, Fellows, Lecturers, Staff | 5 Fellows Philip West, MA, (PhD Jonathan Burton, MA, Visitor, (in order of seniority) Cantab), Associate (PhD Cantab), Associate Professor of English, Times Professor of Organic Fellow and Tutor in English Chemistry and Tutor in Joanna Mary Innes, MA, Principal, Chemistry (MA Cantab), Winifred Holtby Fellow, Tutor in Julie Dickson, MA, DPhil, Fellows, Modern History (LLB Glasgow), Associate Mason Porter, MA, (BS Professor of Law and Tutor Caltech,
    [Show full text]
  • SOMERVILLE COLLEGE REPORT 2014-2015 Somerville College Report 2014-15
    SOMERVILLE COLLEGE REPORT 2014-2015 Somerville College Report 2014-15 Somerville College Somerville College Report 2014-15 Somerville College Contents Visitor, Principal, Fellows, Somerville Development Lecturers, Staff 5 Board Members 64 Principal’s Report 10 Somerville Association Officers and Committee 65 Development and Alumni Relations 13 Events: Dates for the Diary 67 Fellows’ and Lecturers' Activities 15 Report on Junior Research Fellowships 20 J.C.R. Report 22 M.C.R. Report 22 Library Report 23 President’s Report 25 Somerville Senior Members’ Fund 26 Horsman Awards 26 Somerville's Great War 27 This Report is edited by Liz Cooke (Tel. 01865 270632; Members’ News and Publications 30 [email protected]) and Alex Monro Marriages 35 Designer: Laura Hart Printer: Hunts Births 35 Photographers: John Cairns, Keith Barnes, Duncan McRae, Somerville College Deaths 36 Archives et al Fonts: Foco by Dalton Maag, Helvetica by Obituaries 37 Max Miedinger Cover: A warm welcome to Somerville : Academic Report 53 Dave Atkins, Deputy Lodge Manager Visitor, Principal, Fellows, Lecturers, Staff | 5 Fellows Philip West, MA, (PhD Jonathan Burton, MA, Visitor, (in order of seniority) Cantab), Associate (PhD Cantab), Associate Professor of English, Times Professor of Organic Fellow and Tutor in English Chemistry and Tutor in Joanna Mary Innes, MA, Principal, Chemistry (MA Cantab), Winifred Holtby Fellow, Tutor in Julie Dickson, MA, DPhil, Fellows, Modern History (LLB Glasgow), Associate Mason Porter, MA, (BS Professor of Law and Tutor Caltech,
    [Show full text]
  • Sarah Fielding and Mid Eighteenth-Century Literary Strategies. Suzuki, Mika
    The 'true use of reading' : Sarah Fielding and mid eighteenth-century literary strategies. Suzuki, Mika The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1622 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] The 'True Use of Reading': Sarah Fielding and Mid Eighteenth-Century Literary Strategies MIKA SUZUKI Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary and Westfield College University of London 1998 1 [LONDON) Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) establishedher identity as an author. The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of writing and reading. Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people.
    [Show full text]