• This edition includes an introduction, and notes and bibliography.
• An Introduction that emphasizes what is experimental and new in Austen's last work in comparison to her previous novels.
• The text has been newly transcribed from the manuscript and draws upon the Oxford Edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, 5 vols. (OUP, 2018), which in turn is based on the digital edition of 2010; both edited by Kathryn Sutherland.
• The text draws on Austen's sister Cassandra Austen's transcription for specific editorial features in order to make the work accessible to the general reader and to highlight the novel's early history in family performance.
• The edition has full notes, identifying and explaining literary allusions, references to diseases and contemporary medical treatments, Regency fashions, quasi-specialist language, etc.

       
no person could be really well . . . without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year'
                          
In Sanditon, Jane Austen writes what may well be the first seaside novel: a novel, that is, that explores the mysterious and startling transformations that a stay by the sea can work on individuals and relationships. Sanditon is a fictitious place on England's south coast and the obsession of local landowner Mr Thomas Parker. He means to transform this humble fishing village into a fashionable health resort to rival its famous neighbours of Brighton and Eastbourne.
                     
In this, her final, unfinished work, the writer sets aside her familiar subject matter, the country village with its settled community, for the transient and eccentric assortment of people who drift to the new resort, the town built upon sand. If the ground beneath her characters' feet appears less secure, Austen's own vision is opening out. Light and funny, Sanditon is her most experimental and poignant work.