The people of "modern Sanditon", as Austen calls it, have moved out of the "old house – the house of [their] forefathers" and are busily constructing a new world in the form of a modern seaside commercial town. The town of Sanditon is almost certainly based on Worthing, where Jane Austen stayed in late 1805 when the resort was first being developed. There is persuasive evidence that the character of Mr. Thomas Parker was inspired by Edward Ogle, Worthing's early entrepreneur, whom Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra knew.[4][5][6][7] Sanditon is, however, less of an actual reality than an ideal of the inhabitants – one that they express in their descriptions of it. These inhabitants have a conception of the town's identity and of the way in which this identity should be spread to, and appreciated by, the world:
My name perhaps... may be unknown at this distance from the coast – but Sanditon itself – everybody has heard of Sanditon, – the favourite – for a young and rising bathing-place, certainly the favourite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex; – the most favoured by nature, and promising to be the most chosen by man.
— Sanditon
