About this story
Lady Susan Vernon, lately widowed, is charming, penniless, and hunting two husbands at once — one for herself, one for the daughter she despises. Austen wrote this at about nineteen and kept it in a drawer for life; it is all letters, and the letters contradict each other. Some are addressed to you, and you choose what to believe.
Who you’ll meet
Lady Susan Vernon — Austen's dazzling, dangerous widow, all public charm and private scheming, met through her letters.
How it opens
Years after that difficult winter, a packet arrived at Churchill.
Brown paper enclosed letters in several hands and from several houses.
Mr VernonThese papers have travelled farther than we did.
Choose
Begin with the letters we received ourselves.
Let the later Johnson copies wait together.
First tell me how each copy reached us.