Love and Freindship ─ And Other Youthful Writings

Austen's hilarious early stories and sketches—complete with her delightfully quirky spelling habits—now collected in one gorgeous clothbound volume

Jane Austen's earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven-years-old, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work. But it is also a product of the times 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 mothers' fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these highly spirited pieces. This edition includes all of Austen's juvenilia, including her “History of England” - written by a 'partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian and the novellaLady Susan, in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. With a title that captures a young Austen's original idiosyncratic spelling habits and an introduction by Christine Alexander that shows how Austen was self-consciously fashioning herself as a writer from an early age, this is a must-have for any Austen lover.

JANE AUSTEN (1775–1817) was the seventh child of the rector of the parish. In her youth she wrote many burlesques, parodies and other stories, including a short epistolary novel,Lady Susan. The novels published in Austen’s lifetime include Sense and Sensibility(1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). Persuasion was written in a race against failing health, and was published, together withNorthanger Abbey posthumously in 1818. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817.

CHRISTINE ALEXANDER is the Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales, general editor of theJuvenilia Press and co-editor of The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf (2005).