10 Greatest Unfinished Novels

For her last novel, left as a partial fragment at the time of her death, Austen mustered all the wit, sharpness of detail, and exquisite prose that defined her other works for a charming examination of romance and life in a commercial seaside resort in England.

Set mostly in the fictional seaside village of Sanditon, the novel follows Charlotte Heywood as she goes to live with friends, the Parkers, who have designs to make the quiet town a fashionable seaside resort. Soon, they are all visited by relatives of the Parkers, all of whom claim to be 'invalids,' yet seem to be rather hypochondriacs.

This is typical Austen: a magnificently detailed, nuanced, and witty picture of a slice of Regency life.

Austen's bibliography is of astonishing quality and so it should hardly be surprising that, even in the truncated form in which it exists, Sanditon shares that excellence with its full-fleshed counterparts. It is the final piece of sharp observation and criticism from her pen, targeting here the fledging encroachment of commercialisation on traditional rural life.