Sanditon is Jane Austen’s last novel, unfinished when she died in 1817.A comedy, it continues the strain of burlesque and caricature she wroteas a teenager and in private throughout her life. In her ground-breakingessay, Todd contextualizes Austen’s life and work, Sanditon’sconnection with Northanger Abbey (1819) and Emma (1816), JaneAusten’s insecurity of income and home, and the Austen family’sfinancial speculations. She examines the work’s discussion of the moraland social problems of capitalism, entrepreneurship, and growingtourism, and their effect on traditional values and rural communities.Todd explains the early nineteenth-century culture of self: theexploitation of hypochondria, health fads, seaside resorts, and miraclecures. Arguing that Sanditon is an innovative, ebullient study of humanbeings ’ vagaries (rather than using common sense, Sanditon’scharacters follow intuition and bodily signs), she shows Austen’sthemes to be akin to contemporary concerns about self-obsession andthe culture of narcissism, as well as a comic study of the gap betweenhow we think of ourselves and how we appear and sound to others.
