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'Jane Austen practising' Virginia Woolf
Three notebooks of Jane Austen's teenage writings survive. The earliest pieces probably date from 1786 or 1787, around the time that Jane, aged 11 or 12, and her older sister and collaborator Cassandra left school. By this point Austen was already an indiscriminate and precocious reader, devouring pulp fiction and classic literature alike; what she read, she soon began to imitate and parody.
Unlike many teenage writings then and now, these are not secret or agonized confessions entrusted to a private journal and for the writer's eyes alone. Rather, they are stories to be shared and admired by a named audience of family and friends. Devices and themes which appear subtly in Austen's later fiction run riot openly and exuberantly across the teenage page. Drunkenness, brawling, sexual misdemeanour, theft, and even murder prevail.
List of contents
Introduction; Chronology of Composition of Items in the Teenage Notebooks; Note on the Text; Note on Spelling; Select Bibliography; A Chronology of Jane Austen; Maps; VOLUME THE FIRST; Frederic & Elfrida; Jack & Alice; Edgar & Emma; Henry & Eliza; Mr Harley; Sir William Mountague; Mr Clifford; The beautifull Cassandra; Amelia Webster; The Visit; The Mystery; The three Sisters; Detached peices; Ode to Pity; VOLUME THE SECOND; Love and Friendship; Lesley-Castle; The History of England; Collection of Letters; Scraps; VOLUME THE THIRD; Evelyn; Kitty, or the Bower; FAMILY CONTINUATIONS TO VOLUME THE THIRD; Continuation of 'Evelyn', by James Edward Austen; Continuation of 'Evelyn', by Anna Lefroy; Continuation of 'Kitty, or the Bower', by James Edward Austen; APPENDIX; Letter of Sophia Sentiment from The Loiterer, 28 March 1789; Abbreviations; Textual Notes; Explanatory Notes
About the author
Kathryn Sutherland is Professor of Bibliography & Textual Criticism in the University of Oxford. She is the editor of James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections for Oxford World's Classics. She has created a digital edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts (2010), the print edition of which is due to be published by OUP in 2017. She is the author of Jane Austen's Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood (OUP, 2005).
Freya Johnston is University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author of Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709-1791 (2005) and general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (2016 - ).
Summary
The young Jane Austen was a precocious reader, devouring pulp fiction and classic literature, both of which she soon began to imitate and parody. Three volumes of her vivacious teenage writing survive. Devices and themes which appear subtly in her later fiction run riot here: drunkenness, brawling, sexual misdemeanour, theft, and even murder.
Additional text
Professor Kathryn Sutherland and University Lecturer Freya Johnston skilfully edit this fascinating collection of Austen's early teenage writings ... This new edition provides fresh readings of individual texts, and the explanatory notes accompanying them offer to expand our sense of what the young Austen might have been reading and responding to at the time.
Report
...a brilliantly readable [edition]...What is often most engaging and amusing about this bravura writing is Austen's un-restrained comic mayhem. Francis O'Gorman, Reviews31.co.uk
