Sanditon

In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking satire on health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained unfinished because of Austen’s declining health. She supposed that she was suffering from bile, a fluid secreted by the liver. But her symptoms, which included fever, rheumatism, and skin lesions, have…

Sanditon, named for a fictional seaside town where the events of the book are set, is the last novel that Austen embarked on just months before her death in July 1817. She wrote 11 and a half chapters, and the book…