Unfinished Austen is unsatisfying!

This month, I was able to join a Virtual Reading Group covering Catharine or the Bower, Pride and Prejudice, and Sanditon by Jane Austen alongside excerpts from The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. My friend, Christy Horpedahl (guest on our episode about Seveneves) asked me to write an essay or three about these readings.

Here’s my essay “SMITHIAN IMAGINATION AND AUSTEN'S CATHARINE OR THE BOWER”.

Reading the first three chapters of The Theory of Moral Sentiments after reading Catharine or the Bower was amazing. Nearly every sentence of Smith applied to some part of Austen’s story. Until I remembered that most of the story was not written by Austen, but by Leo Rockas. I thought that Rockas maybe had to fill in some blanks here and there in an incomplete manuscript, but then I learned that he basically wrote the last two-thirds of the book. He did a great job! I just wish we knew what Austen had intended for Kitty and the Stanleys.