Love and Freindship
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Description
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” and the novella Lady 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.
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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.
Description
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” and the novella Lady 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.
Book Information
Posts
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.