Questions regarding Lady Susan come up constantly on social media. 'Is it worth reading?' 'Why isn't it the same as Jane's other novels?' 'The heroine is very different kind of person as Jane's other heroines' etc. etc. What we have to remember is that Jane never put this novel forward for publication when she became successful. She wrote this as a teenager and had not yet quite found her feet as an author so she copied a style she herself admired, i.e. writing a story in letter form. That doesn't mean it isn't any good. It's actually quite astonishing to realise that a young girl could have such insight into adult behaviour and relationships. The character of Lady Susan can only be described nowadays as “a self centred bitch”! whose behaviour is quite shocking and certainly controversial. In contemporary Western times we are not likely to be comfortable with the mother/daughter relationship portrayed here.
Lady Susan Comes Alive was written by Gillian Hiscott during Covid shutdown because she felt that a contemporary reader's first impression of Lady Susan as written by Jane might not highlight just how deep and clever it is and that expanding the storyline would give it more clarity. The intense scrutiny of society needed from a teenage girl to produce this is much to be admired.
Relevant professional English actors were also contacted to help produce a recording for an audiobook – one reading the main story and each character reading their “letters”. So although there is a complete book which can be purchased from Amazon it is also split into 3 parts mainly for the purpose of reading alongside the audio book which can be accessed
on Amazon by searching under Gillian Hiscott or via website gillianhiscott.weebly.com
