Jane Austen, Early and Late

Jane Austen's six novels, published towards the end of her life, are as brilliant as they are compact. Her earlier writings have routinely been dismissed as mere juvenilia, but Freya Johnston argues that they cannot be definitively separated from the unpublished works. Examining the three manuscript volumes in which Austen collected her earliest writings, Johnston finds that Austens regard and affection for them are revealed by her continuing to revisit and revise them throughout her adult life. She upends the conventional narrative, demonstrating a stylistic and thematic continuity across the full range of Austens work, asking whether it makes sense to speak of an early and a late Austen at all.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 09 May 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Jane Austen's six novels, published towards the end of her short life, represent a body of work that is as brilliant as it is compact. Her earlier writings have routinely been dismissed as mere juvenilia, or stepping stones to mature proficiency and greatness. Austens first biographer described them as "childish effusions." Was he right to do so? Can the novels be definitively separated from the unpublished works? In Jane Austen, Early and Late, Freya Johnston argues that they cannot. Examining the three manuscript volumes in which Austen collected her earliest writings, Johnston finds that Austen's regard and affection for them are revealed by her continuing to revisit and revise them throughout her adult life. The teenage works share the milieu and the humor of the novels, while revealing more clearly the sources and influences upon which Austen drew. Johnston upends the conventional narrative, according to which Austen discarded the satire and fantasy of her first writings in favor of the irony and realism of the novels. By demonstrating a stylistic and thematic continuity across the full range of Austen's work, Johnston asks whether it makes sense to speak of an early and a late Austen at all.
Jane Austen, Early and Late offers a new picture of the author in all her complexity and ambiguity, and shows us that it is not necessarily true that early work yields to later, better things.

Weight: 476g
Dimension: 233 x 156 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691229805