Complete and unabridged, with 55 full-page plates by Thomas Lawrence, John Constable and George Morland. Austen at fourteen, writing for her family and sparing no one: a burlesque of the sentimental novel in which heroines faint alternately on a sofa, virtue is proved by fainting, and reason is despised as vulgar. She spelt the title wrong in the manuscript and it has stayed wrong ever since. Read it for the shock of hearing the mature voice already fully armed. Fifty-five plates of landscape and farmyard scenes by painters including John Constable and George Morland set the Regency world Austen was already mocking at fourteen.
