Love and Freindship and other early works by Jane Austen (1922)

A collection of Jane Austen's work written when she was around 14 to 17 or so, but not published until long after her death.

Book Review: Love and Freindship (yes, that's the correct title) is not the acclaimed 2016 film by Whit Stillman; that movie is based on Austen's early novella, Lady Susan. This book contains four examples of Austen's juvenilia, including her "History of England." These stories are not lengthy, complete, or overtly similar to her later works (and her spelling needs work). What they are is clever, precocious, and laugh out loud funny. She has a wonderful sense of humor and the stories both entertain and amuse. The humor in Love and Freindship is much broader and more obvious than the scalpel skills and satire of her later work, but these stories too teem with parody, irony, and wit. That Austen's writing was so developed at such a young age surprised and amazed me, and the stories seem oddly modern (as her novels do not). For Austenites they also contain a number of hints, clues, and foreshadowings of her later novels, and are intriguing for that alone. The stories in Love and Freindship (that is so hard to misspell!) are not necessary for anyone except Austen completists, but they are certainly enjoyable and in no way a waste of the reader's time. My only complaint in that this 94 page book is too short, and there's plenty of space for more of Austen's juvenilia. In fact, I wonder if this edition is a truncated version of a longer work. In any event, this short book wonderfully augments and complements the Jane Austen creations we know and love. [3★]