Long before Pride and Prejudice, a teenage Jane Austen was already writing — and she was already merciless. This first volume of her juvenilia collects the short stories, mock-novels, and burlesque plays she wrote for her family's private amusement, packed with fainting heroines, implausible elopements, and heroines who steal, drink, and lie their way through life without a shred of remorse.
These are not polished drawing-room comedies of manners: they are gleeful, anarchic parodies of the sentimental fiction Austen devoured as a girl, written with a comic timing that already shows the razor-sharp instincts of the novelist to come. Readers who love Austen's mature wit will find its wild, unfiltered origin here.
