The upcoming Andrew Davies drama promises to be a spectacle – and it’s very much a story about Sidmouth:
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Sanditon – Official Trailer 2019 – YouTube
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From the Guardian:
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Did Jane Austen write the first seaside novel?
The author visited the new resorts of Lyme Regis and Sidmouth, and is rumoured to have had a holiday romance. Did she also create a new genre with Sanditon, her strange final work?
Sanditon, abandoned unfinished in March 1817, four months before Jane Austen died, is set in a fictional fishing village on the Sussex coast. Here the property speculators Mr Parker and Lady Denham plan an ambitious modern development to rival its longer established neighbours at Brighton, Eastbourne and Worthing…
Sanditon is a study in fragments of a society in fragments. Does it represent Austen’s verdict on England in 1817? After decades of war, has England lost its moorings? Speculation is the watchword for the resort’s visitors and inhabitants alike: they gamble on land, investments, health, love.
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And it’s already being speculated upon in the United States:
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Masterpiece’s “Sanditon,” coming in January 2020 after premiering on ITV this fall, is certain to thrill Jane Austen aficionados. It’s her last book, as the author died in 1817 before finishing it. The series is executive produced by Andrew Davies, who has adapted five other Austen novels. “She didn’t get any further than introducing the characters and the premise of the story. She was seeking a new departure in the last year of her life, a new setting – a little seaside village which was becoming fashionable,” said Davies, who based the fictional English town on Sidmouth, a place he first visited as a child.
“The male characters are different than the typical Austen men,” Davies explained. “They are not landed gentry. They are entrepreneurs forging a new age by taking risks to make money.”
PBS Unveils Slate of New Programming
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Jane Austen would have been wryly amused at how speculators in Sidmouth named a block of flats after her last novel:
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Sanditon, Sidmouth: Apartment Walkthrough
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For a little more:
Futures Forum: Fortfield Hotel … to … Sanditon apartments … to S106 cash
Futures Forum: Fortfield Hotel … to … Sanditon apartments … How much exactly will Sidmouth benefit?
Futures Forum: Fortfield Hotel … to … Sanditon apartments: … the ‘issues’ are opened up again…