Recently widowed and still young, the beautiful, sharp-tongued Lady Susan Vernon is the most accomplished flirt in England, and one of its least scrupulous. Newly without a home of her own, she descends on the country estate of her disapproving brother- and sister-in-law, scheming all the while to secure a rich second husband for herself and to force an advantageous, loveless marriage on her gentle daughter Frederica.
Told almost entirely through letters, the novella lets Lady Susan reveal her calculating strategies in her own words to a like-minded confidante, even as the relatives around her try to see through her charm. The result is a comedy of manipulation in which the villain is by far the wittiest and most magnetic person in the room.
An early work that Jane Austen never published in her lifetime, appearing only in 1871, Lady Susan is a brief, biting epistolary satire. Sharper and more cynical than her mature novels, it offers an irresistible antiheroine and an early showcase of Austen's gift for irony.