Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings: Jane Austen

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.