Love & Friendship

In Which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated

By: Whit Stillman

Narrated by: Helen Johns, Matt Addis

A clever reimagining of Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan by acclaimed filmmaker Whit Stillman.

Jane Austen's funniest novel is also her least known - until now. A sharp comedy of manners set in the 1790s, Love & Friendship centres on Lady Susan Vernon: impossibly beautiful, charming, witty and completely self-absorbed. Recently widowed, Lady Susan arrives unannounced at her brother-in-law's estate to wait out colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society.

While there, she becomes determined to secure a new husband for herself and one for her reluctant debutante daughter, Frederica, too. As Lady Susan embarks on a controversial relationship with a married man, seduction, deception, broken hearts and gossip all ensue.

With a pitch-perfect Austenian sensibility, Stillman breathes new life into Austen's work, making it his own by adding original narration from a character comically loyal to the story's fiendishly manipulative heroine, Lady Susan.

©2016 John Whitney Stillman (P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton

Whit Stillman is BOSS

For fans of Jane Austin. For fans of Whit Stillman. A witty, charming, and overall entertaining book. Equal parts Whit and Jane. A wonderful expansion on Jane Austen‘s unfinished book. The prose is fantastic, the letters are magnificent, and the appendices and the footnotes are a most welcomed addition. A+++

screenplay - not final draft

I really love the movie Love and Friendship and saw it before "reading" it. the novel is very close to what the movie is - except that the movie cut out the "author" and narrator of the book (love and friendship is a defense of the way lady Susan was portrayed in Jane austen's "lady Susan"). for me, the deletion of the narrator's commentary in the movie is a positive move as he seems only to serves to literally point out what should be obvious by inference. i give the author some credit for assuming that the reader won't "get it" without some help - since critics give it 99% fresh rating on rotten tomatoes, but viewers only give it a 68%. I think that it goes over quite a few people's heads. but, if you do get it, you find it smart and hilarious. the actors do a better job in the movie than the reader does in the audible performance. Kate Beckinsale is amazing in the role of lady Susan! if you will just choose one, watch the movie. if you love the movie as much as i, go ahead and get the book. you won't be disappointed. you also get "lady Susan" by Jane austen with the book in the form of appendices, which I was grateful for!