Jane Austen: from Sanditon to Winchester

Bicentenary rewriting by Donald Measham of his ‘Jane Austen out of the blue’, with due regard to Austen’s last long sentence in her final work of fiction. From the Manuscript of Jane Austen’s unfinished SANDITON: “Charlotte had leisure to look about & to be told by Mrs Parker that the whole-length Portrait of a stately Gentleman, which placed above the Mantelpiece, caught the eyes immediately was the picture of Sir H Denham – and that just one among many miniatures in another part of the room, little conspicuous, presented Mr Hollis. – Poor Mr Hollis! – It was impossible not to feel him hardly used; to be obliged to stand back in his own house, and see the best place by the fire constantly occupied by Sir H Denham.” The name ‘Charlotte’ had always appealed to Jane Austen, who regretted she had yet to use it for a leading lady. In Sanditon there is a young lady with that name. Can this alternative ‘I’ make her way into the story? Take over from the dying author at a pinch...?