Jane Austen's last work, now a PBS limited series adapted by acclaimed
screenwriter Andrew Davies.
Sanditon--an eleven-chapter fragment left at Jane Austen's death
completed by an Austen devotee and novelist-- is a charming addition to
Austen's novels on England's privileged classes and the deception,
snobbery, and unexpected romances that occur in their world. When
Charlotte Heywood accepts an invitation to visit the newly fashionable
seaside resort of Sanditon, she is introduced to a full range of polite
society, from reigning local dowager Lady Denham to her impoverished
ward Clara, and from the handsome, feckless Sidney Parker to his
amusing, if hypochondriac, sisters. A heroine whose clear-sighted
commens sense is often at war with romance, Charlotte cannot help
observing around her both folly and passion in many guises. But can the
levelheaded Charlotte herself resist the desires of the heart?