- Published: 21 October 2015
- ISBN: 9780141395111
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 512
- RRP: $24.99
Love And Freindship
And Other Youthful Writings
This sparkling collection of Austen's early writings - some penned when she was just eleven years old - is playful, subversive and shot through with wit.
Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious - and often outrageous - early stories, sketches and pieces of nonsense.
Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into human folly, and a preoccupation with manners, morals and money. But it is also a product of the eighteenth century in which she grew up - dark, grotesque, often surprisingly bawdy, and a far cry from the polished, sparkling novels of manners for which she became famous. Drunken heroines, babies who bite off their mother's fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these very funny pieces. This edition includes all of Austen's juvenilia, including her 'History of England' - written by 'a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian' - and the novella 'Lady Susan', in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. Taken together, they offer a fascinating - and often surprising - insight into the early Austen.
This major new edition is the first time Austen's juvenilia has appeared in Penguin Classics. Edited by Professor Christine Alexander, it includes an introduction, notes and other useful editorial materials.
- Published: 21 October 2015
- ISBN: 9780141395111
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 512
- RRP: $24.99
Other books in the series
About the author
Jane Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, was born in Hampshire in 1775, and later lived in Bath and the village of Chawton. As a child and teenager, she wrote brilliantly witty stories for her family's amusement, as well as a novella, Lady Susan. Her first published novel was Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in 1811 and was soon followed by Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. Austen died in 1817, and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously in 1818.
