![]() So, when I’m giving you this conventional version, this isn’t as if it’s what everyone has thought. Could you sketch what that is and how it came about? ![]() Our topic is ‘Alternative Austen’ which implies, of course, that there’s a primary, conventional Austen that needs somehow to be worked against. I’m sure that’s not the answer you necessarily expected – I don’t think it’s her greatest work of art – but I find it so moving to think about that text in her bicentenary year. It deals with illness, hypochondria, and some things that you can see must have been incredibly hard for her to mull over and write about – and make jokes about – while she herself was not well. To me, Sanditon would be a fitting final tribute read to Austen. ![]() It shows her going in some different, exciting directions that we have little idea how she’d have followed through with, if she’d continued writing after March 1817. Reading that unfinished novel this year has been incredibly moving. I would make the final read her final write, that is Sanditon. ![]() I do think they are two different things. ![]() Surely every Jane Austen interview needs to begin by asking: what would the literary equivalent of your final meal be? Which of the novels is the best? Actually, that might be two different questions.
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