Juvenilia

Jane Austen's remarkable juvenilia date from 1787, when she was eleven, to 1793, when she was seventeen. She preserved these early writings in three manuscript notebooks, entitled, with mock solemnity, 'Volume the First', 'Volume the Second', and 'Volume the Third'. Most of these works are short fictions, but Austen also wrote the opening of what could have become a full-length novel, 'Catharine', as well as dramatic sketches, verses, and a few non-fictional pieces. Astonishingly sophisticated and inventive, these writings are now receiving the scholarly attention they deserve. This edition provides a fresh transcription of Austen's manuscripts, with comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction, covering the context and publication history of the juvenilia, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus. It also prints, for the first time, the copious satirical marginalia that Austen wrote on her copies of Oliver Goldsmith's History of England.

Introduction; Note on the text; Volume the First: Frederic and Elfrida; Jack and Alice; Edgar and Emma; Henry and Eliza; The adventures of Mr Harley; Sir William Mountague; Memoirs of Mr Clifford; The beautiful Cassandra; Amelia Webster; The Visit; The Mystery; The Three Sisters; A fragment - written to inculcate the practise of Virtue; A beautiful description of the different effects of Sensibility on different Minds; The Generous Curate; Ode to Pity; Volume the Second: Love and Freindship; Lesley Castle; The History of England; A Collection of Letters; The female philosopher; The First Act of a Comedy; A Letter from a Young Lady; A Tour through Wales; A Tale; Volume the Third: Evelyn, Catharine, or the Bower; Corrections and Emendations; Appendix A. The History of England: facsimile; Appendix B. Marginalia in Oliver Goldsmith's The History of England; Appendix C. Marginalia in Vicesimus Knox's Elegant Extracts; Appendix D. Sophia Sentiment's letter in The Loiterer; Appendix D. Continuations of 'Evelyn' and 'Catharine' by James Edward Austen and Anna Lefroy; Abbreviations; Explanatory notes.

Peter Sabor is Director of the Burney Centre and Canada Research Chair in Eighteenth-Century Studies at McGill University, Montreal.