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A/N: There is nothing wrong with this book. It is a collection of Juvenilia and unfinished works by Jane Austen and is marketed as such. You get what you're told. And yet... and yet. I honestly don't know what I expected - esp since, like I said, I got what I was offered - but this book just wasn't for me. There was a very charming over-the-top-ness to JA's first stories, but this charming ridiculousness lost its edge after 3 or 4 stories of the same kind. I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by the tone, and whenever I did manage to get invested in one of the stories, they would just end abruptly leaving me frustrated (which IS a point in unfinished works, so that's a me-problem, not a problem of the book). The notes in the appendix were way too analytical for my personal taste, I would have preferred just the odd explanatory footnote to give context to the story rather than making it feel like an essay. I ditched looking them up about three or four stories in. TLDR: Maybe a good book for people interested in the development of JA's skills but very very different from her finished novels. Unfortunately, not a book for me.
May 18, 2025
A/N: There is nothing wrong with this book. It is a collection of Juvenilia and unfinished works by Jane Austen and is marketed as such. You get what you're told. And yet... and yet. I honestly don't know what I expected - esp since, like I said, I got what I was offered - but this book just wasn't for me. There was a very charming over-the-top-ness to JA's first stories, but this charming ridiculousness lost its edge after 3 or 4 stories of the same kind. I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by the tone, and whenever I did manage to get invested in one of the stories, they would just end abruptly leaving me frustrated (which IS a point in unfinished works, so that's a me-problem, not a problem of the book). The notes in the appendix were way too analytical for my personal taste, I would have preferred just the odd explanatory footnote to give context to the story rather than making it feel like an essay. I ditched looking them up about three or four stories in. TLDR: Maybe a good book for people interested in the development of JA's skills but very very different from her finished novels. Unfortunately, not a book for me.
May 18, 2025
