Name: Love and Freindship
ISBN: 9780141395111

Jane Austen

'They flew into each other's arms - It was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself - We fainted Alternately on a Sofa' 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. Here are bawdy sketches, short tales, imagined letters and miniature histories in which vain, egotistical men forget their own wives, drunken young women slander and poison their competition, and one woman accepts two marriage proposals for fear of causing offence. Also featured is the novella 'Lady Susan', telling of an adulterous aristocrat who manipulates and deceives those around her for personal gain. Delighting in nonsense and wordplay, these riotous pieces reveal Austen's dark, anarchic young imagination. Edited and with an introduction and notes by Christine Alexander

And Other Youthful Writings

Love and Freindship

The new hit movie Love and Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale is based on two early works by Jane Austen, Lady Susan and Love and Freindship both of which are included here. Fans of the movie will find the bulk of the plot has been taken from Lady Susan and the title from Love and Freindship.

Love and Friendship

Ada 

Sorry, but nope. I listened to this as an audiobook and for the first half of it, I kept thinking that the only way this could actually be enjoyable was if I took a shot every time the word ‘sensibility’ pops up. I then did some research and found out this was intended as a satire - at which point I thought to look at it differently. Still nope, sorry. In my view, when an author constructs a satire, the writing needs to achieve a high threshold of ridiculous and antithetic construction for it to be obvious that it is a satire. If I have to be told something is a satire to understand it is such, then it’s not built very well. I thought that, overall, the writing was not that different from the ‘Sense and Sensibility’ novel, which made it increasingly difficult for me to understand this as a satire. 
I know she was very young when she wrote this, and it is perhaps intended for the Austen enthusiasts (which I am not part of). I really tried to explore more of Austen’s work in hopes one of it will click with me - turns out not. Might still use this as a drinking game basis though!

Arta

3.5 ★

Some of these stories are pretty wild to be written by a kid (also a clergyman's daughter at that) and I love that Austen had the audacity to dedicate them to her family members (including her father).

Jane Austen's brilliant, hilarious - and often outrageous - early stories, sketches and pieces of nonsense, in a beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition. 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 they are also a product of the eighteenth century she grew up in - 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 Christine Alexander, it includes an introduction, notes and other useful editorial materials. Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke, 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. On her father's retirement in 1801, the family moved to Bath, and subsequently to Chawton in Hampshire. 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 in 1815-16, and was published, together with Northanger Abbey, posthumously in 1818. Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817. Christine Alexander is Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales and general editor of the Juvenilia Press. She has published extensively on the Brontës and has co-edited the first book on literary juvenilia, The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf (2005). 'Spirited, easy, full of fun verging with freedom upon sheer nonsense...At fifteen she had few illusions about other people and none about herself' - Virginia Woolf' [Her] inspiration was the inspiration of Gargantua and of Pickwick; it was the gigantic inspiration of laughter' - G. K. Chesterton

Sam Pulliam

This is a collection of works by Jane Austen from her childhood. It contains many unfinished works and novels written in the form of letters including Lady Susan.
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This was a fascinating and entertaining read! It was so interesting to see Austen's writing develop. I also think a lot of these early writings were so funny. Some definitely read like stories a kid or young teenager would make up and I sometimes found myself laughing out loud. I also really enjoyed Lady Susan. I did really think she was a fun character until about the halfway point but overall, I still enjoyed this early Austen novel. I especially recommend this to Austen fans.

Love and Freindship And Other Youthful Writings

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