Austen's hilarious early stories and sketches-complete with her delightfully quirky spelling
habits-now collected in one gorgeous clothbound volume including Lady Susan the basis for
Whit Stillman's feature film Love and Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny
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.
