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.
Three notebooks of Jane Austen's early writings survive, dating from 1786 or 1787, around the time that Jane aged 11 or 12, and her older sister and collaborator Cassandra left school. 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
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.
