Happy new year! Before I start watching Sanditon tonight, I wanted to be sure to read (or, actually, re-read) Sanditon, because I was curious about what the TV version would go forward with our Jane's unfinished story. There's so heartbreakingly little of her book (I just read that she was writing it when she was already ill, in the six months before she died), but it was very moving because what she did write seems so joyous. Maybe that's because it's set in a sunny seaside resort, or because so many of the characters (except, possibly, Charlotte Heyward, our heroine, and Clara Brereton, the poor relation who is companion to wealthy Lady Denham), are a little larger than life: Mr. Parker, Sanditon's promoter; his invalid siblings, his flashy brother, Sydney {was he going to be Willoughby/Wickham, or Darcy? hard to tell}, twice-married Lady Denham (who seems like a more humorous version of Austen's other rich, controlling old ladies). All the fragment does is to introduce the characters and set the stage for whatever was going to happen to them, but there seem to be endless possibilities in what to do with it, and I like to think that Austen would have taken some possibly snarky delight in that.
At the library, I found a continuation 'by another {unidentified} lady' that was written in 1975. I've read this before too, but it was a long time ago, but it would be fun to compare the two versions. Nothing can compare with the real thing, but we have more Jane, and there's nothing sad about that.
