Lady Susan is a short novel in epistolary format with a curious sort of publication history: it was written when its author was not quite 20, but not published for some 50 years after her death. It can be described, loosely, as the opposite of a Victorian romance - a strong, intelligent, but immoral woman gets mired in all kinds of schemes, none of which have the slightest thing to do with anything resembling love. She is capricious and selfish, toying with men and perhaps even the fate of her daughter. Despite all that, she gets her say and then some - letters from her form the bulk of the text, and all of the other letters revolve around her. True to the format, the usual questions about the reliability of the narrator, motives and action hidden from the reader’s view, and so forth, are all key to understanding the plot. The ending has a kind of nod to morality which seems like something of a cop-out, but Austen’s point seems clear enough: well-behaved women seldom make history. I read this book on New Year’s Day, so it was quite an interesting way to start off the year. I’m quite fascinated by the format - the narrow constraints it places on the author, the greater imagination it requires of the reader. Austen did it great justice with this work.