These inventive and entertaining pieces display the early sparkles of
wit and imagination of Jane Austen's mature fiction. Written when she
was only in her teens, they are by turns amusing, acerbic and
occasionally downright silly.
'Love and Friendship' and 'Lesley
Castle' provide parodies of the gentry and the fashionable idea of
sensibility of the time. 'A History of England' supplies us with a
lively chronicle of English monarchic history. Also included in this
collection are 'The Three Sisters', 'Catharine', the series of vignettes
known as 'A Collection of Letters' and 'Lady Susan', an epistolary
story which was recently adapted for the cinema. Taken together, these
pieces display all the wry humour, shrewd observation and satirical
insight of Emma or Pride and Prejudice.