A Preview of Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings (Penguin Clothbound Classics), by Jane Austen

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 

Collectors of Jane Austen books know that there have been hundreds of different editions of her classic novels created since their original publication (1811-1817). So many, in fact, that only a few of the beautiful and outrageous ones could be featured in the new book Jane Austen Cover to Cover, by Margaret C. Sullivan.

Seventh Book

The recently published Penguin Clothbound Classics series is one of the possibilities to chose from. I am happy to share that after publishing all of Austen’s six major novels in the series, her juvenilia, Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings,  is now available for purchase.

Austen’s Juvenilia

With only four novels published during her short life and two posthumously, her popularity continued to grow through the decades of the nineteenth century.  It was only a matter of time before her family allowed publication of her juvenilia: a set of three volumes of her youthful writings. Composed c. 1787-1792, Austen’s Juvenilia consists of twenty seven items—sketches, parodies & short stories of comical, nonsensical, outrageous and sometimes dark imaginings by a writer in the making—all engaging amusements written for her family and friends.

Clothbound Series

The Penguin Clothbound Classics series are beautifully designed editions by Coralie Bickford-Smith featuring gorgeous patterns stamped on linen cases, colored endpapers, and ribbon markers. Reminiscent of the Edwardian editions of classics that are so collectible today, these rich and sumptuous volumes are among my most coveted editions in my library.

This 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.

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BOOK DESCRIPTION

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.

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AUTHOR BIO

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.

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EDITOR & INTRODUCTION BIO

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).

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ADVANCE PRAISE

• “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

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BOOK INFORMATION

• Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings (Penguin Clothbound Classics), by Jane Austen
• Penguin Classics (2015)
• Hardcover (510) pages
• ISBN: 978-0140433340
• Genre: Literary Classics

ADDITONAL INFO | ADD TO GOODREADS

We received a review copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Austenprose is an Amazon affiliate. Cover image courtesy of Penguin Classics © 2015; text Laurel Ann Nattress © 2015, austenprose.com. Last updated 6 March 2022.