Composition date of Lady Susan

"레이디 수잔" 의 집필 시기

The purpose of this study is to try to date the letters of Lady Susan and to find out which year's calender Jane Austen used to write the novel. The novel in forty-one letters with a brief narrated conclusion was transcribed as a fair copy by Jane Austen around 1805. However, no conclusive evidence for a precise date of composition exists, as only the fair copy survives. There is a watermark of 1805 on two leaves of the surviving manuscript of the transcribed copy. This indicates the period of the work's transcription but it does not indicate when it was first composed beyond suggesting that it was completed sometime before 1805. In the novel itself Jane Austen marked time sufficiently and frequently enough to allow us to follow it precisely. This strongly suggests that Jane Austen used a calender to write letters of the novel, even though dates and days were not given to the letters. To determine the most probable date of the calender is significant because it can be a clue to clarify when the novel was composed originally. Many words and phrases pointing to specific days or periods are mentioned in almost all the letters of the novel. From the words and phrases, a potential date to each letter can be successfully deduced and a potential possible calender for the novel can be made. In the end, all attempts to determine the authentic calender used for the novel fail. The main reason for the failure is that discovering clues to a specific authentic date to each letter proves internally impossible. Composition date of the novel still remains as a challenge requiring further study.