Buyer protection
Donkey milk knowledge archive · Historical source
Jane Austen, “Sanditon” (1817): Lady Denham and her two milch asses
In her last, unfinished novel of 1817, Jane Austen has the miserly Lady Denham hope for visitors who are prescribed asses’ milk. She owns two milch asses and wants to sell the milk to sick guests of the seaside resort.
- Author
- Jane Austen (1775–1817)
- Work
- Untitled novel fragment, known in the family as “Sanditon”; first printed as Fragment of a Novel, ed. R. W. Chapman, Oxford 1925
- Passage
- Chapter 6, p. 80; chapter 7, p. 100; chapter 11, p. 155 of Chapman’s 1925 edition
- Time & place
- 27 January – 18 March 1817 (first printed 1925) · Chawton, Hampshire (set in the fictional resort of Sanditon, Sussex)
- Type of source
- Novel (unfinished manuscript)
In the original words
What the original says
And out of such a number, who knows but some may be consumptive & want Asses milk—& I have two Milch asses at this present time.
And among so many [pupils], who knows, some may be consumptive and need asses’ milk – and I happen to have two milch asses just now.
Now, if we could get a young Heiress to be sent here for her health—(and if she was ordered to drink asses milk I could supply her)—and as soon as she got well, have her fall in love with Sir Edward!
If only we could get a young heiress sent here for her health – (and if she were ordered to drink asses’ milk, I could supply her) – and as soon as she recovered, have her fall in love with Sir Edward!
made the acquaintance for Sir Edward’s sake, & the sake of her Milch asses.
… [Lady Denham] made the acquaintance for Sir Edward’s sake, and for the sake of her milch asses.
English rendering: our own translation by the DON DONKEY’S editorial team, following the sense of the text.
A look at the original
What the passage looks like
Page 80 of Chapman’s first edition (Oxford 1925), which reproduces the manuscript line for line: Lady Denham on “Asses milk” and her two “Milch asses”.
The page comes from a freely accessible digitised copy. Click to open the passage at the library.
University of Virginia Library, Digitalisat via Internet Archive; Public Domain Mark
Background
Who, when, what kind of text
Jane Austen wrote the fragment in the first months of the year she died; she dated the beginning 27 January and the end 18 March 1817. According to the preface of the 1925 edition, the text is a draft with many deletions. Pages 99 to 101 were first written in pencil and later inked over, including the second passage on asses’ milk.
The manuscript stayed in the family and was first printed in full in 1925. R. W. Chapman reproduced it line for line with Austen’s spelling and abbreviations. In 1930 a descendant gave the manuscript to King’s College, Cambridge. The novel is set in a Sussex fishing village that is to become a fashionable seaside resort.
Content
What the source reports about donkey milk
Lady Denham is the richest woman in the place and a partner in the resort scheme. When she hears of a French girls’ boarding school that might come to Sanditon, she immediately thinks of business: among so many pupils some might be consumptive and need asses’ milk, and she happens to have two milch asses.
Later she wishes for a rich young heiress to be sent there for her health. If asses’ milk were prescribed, Lady Denham could supply it, and afterwards the heiress should fall in love with her nephew Sir Edward. Money and health are closely linked in her plans.
When a sickly, wealthy young lady, Miss Lambe, does arrive, Lady Denham calls on her “for the sake of her milch asses”. But her companion Mrs Griffiths follows her physician’s prescriptions strictly and admits no complaint that asses’ milk could relieve. Lady Denham’s calculation fails.
At a glance
Figures & facts from the source
Timeline
Where this source stands in the history of donkey milk
Each dot is a source from our knowledge archive – from Greek antiquity to the present day.
Critical assessment
How reliable is this source?
Source value
A literary text, not a factual source. It comes, however, from a very precise observer of English society. The 1925 edition reproduces the manuscript line for line and can be checked as a scan; the manuscript itself is in Cambridge.
A satire on the health trade
Austen takes asses’ milk for granted as a familiar remedy of the seaside resort and mocks Lady Denham’s business sense. The joke only works because readers around 1817 knew asses’ milk as a medical prescription for consumption.
Today’s assessment
The passages show how naturally asses’ milk belonged to the spa culture of the Regency period. They say nothing about any effect; consumption (tuberculosis) is treated with antibiotics today.
Our assessment
That Jane Austen, in her last novel, uses milch asses as a business idea of a seaside entrepreneur shows how familiar the subject was in 1817. We enjoy the fact that donkey milk becomes the punchline about greed and health fashions.
References
Sources to check
- Primary sourceFragment of a Novel written by Jane Austen, January–March 1817, now first printed from the manuscript, ed. R. W. Chapman, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1925, p. 80 (line-for-line print of the manuscript; scan in the Internet Archive)
https://archive.org/details/austensanditon/page/n97/mode/1up - SupplementarySame edition as full text at Project Gutenberg (eBook 74233) with page markers; passages on pp. 80, 100 and 155
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/74233/pg74233-images.html - SupplementaryJane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts: description of the Sanditon manuscript (King’s College, Cambridge, since 1930)
https://janeausten.ac.uk/edition/ms/SanditonHeadNote.html
More sources and studies in the research archive. Summarised by the DON DONKEY’S editorial team, as of November 2026.