Read Along Invite: Lady Susan by Jane Austen!

I know, I know.

We've read all of the Big Six, so earlier this year, I had a poll to determine what we'd read for our read-along this year, and technically, the winner was a bit of JAFF (Jane Austen Fan Fiction for you noobs), aka a reinterpretation, sequel or adaptation of Austen's works. It won very slightly, but it won nonetheless.

And then I decided to toss that out the window, so...
Look, my reasons were GOOD, I promise. I decided that, for our first adaptation read along, I wanted much more planning to go into it. I wanted to have a whole series of things planned, and maybe work directly with an author or publisher to get you guys a discount on the book, so that everyone would have a little easier access to the title; I wanted to devote some serious time and thought to discussion prompts, and maybe have some kind of group reading thing on twitter or youtube live, or something.  And reading an adaptation just felt wrong, somehow.
Afterall, there's still a bit of original Jane to be read.

And that bit of Jane -- this year, at least -- is the silly, irreverent, absolutely madcap Lady Susan! It's been ages since I've read Lady S., and I've only read it once, so I'm coming to this with pretty fresh eyes, myself. But whether you've read it countless times, or never-not-once, I hope you'll join me not only in reading this very quick, very different incomplete novel from Our Lady Austen, but also in discussing and speculating and picking apart. . .

If you don't already own a copy, here are a number of options to pick it up (some even for free!):

FREE digital copies:

PDF: Random Bits of Fascination (courtesy Maria Grace!)

Mollands (online) |  Republic of Pemberley (online) |  Project Gutenberg (EPUB, Kindle, or read online)

or on audio from Audible  |  Librivox

or, if you want to own a shiny new physical copy or annotated ebook, Amazon's obviously got you covered.

Compilation | Annotated | Illustrated

So I hope you'll join us in reading this short work over the next 2 weeks. Discussion questions will be posted next week, after everyone's had a chance to get started, so keep an eye out for that. And save the date for a very special watch-along, which promises to make for a very entertaining night -- but more on that to come! 

Click here to return to the Austen in August main page!