Editing Jane Austen (section)

===''Juvenilia'' (1787–1793)===

From at least the time she was aged eleven, Austen wrote poems and stories to amuse herself and her family.<ref>Le Faye (2004), 66; Litz (1986), 48; Honan (1987), 61–62, 70; Lascelles (1966), 4; Todd (2015), 4</ref> She exaggerated mundane details of daily life and parodied common plot devices in "stories [] full of anarchic fantasies of female power, licence, illicit behaviour, and general high spirits", according to [[Janet Todd]].<ref>Todd (2015), 4–5</ref> Containing work written between 1787 and 1793, the juvenilia (or childhood writings) that Austen compiled [[Foul papers|fair copies]] consisted of twenty-nine early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the ''Juvenilia''.<ref>{{cite news |title=Jane Austen's juvenilia |url=https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/jane-austens-juvenilia |access-date=26 August 2020 |agency=British Library |archive-date=29 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729083926/http://bl/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> She called the three notebooks "Volume the First", "Volume the Second" and "Volume the Third", and they preserve 90,000 words she wrote during those years.<ref>Southam (1986), 244</ref> The ''Juvenilia'' are often, according to scholar Richard Jenkyns, "boisterous" and "anarchic"; he compares them to the work of 18th-century novelist [[Laurence Sterne]].<ref>Jenkyns (2004), 31</ref>

[[File:CassandraAusten-HenryIV.jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[Henry IV of England|Henry IV]]. Declaredly written by "a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian", ''[[The History of England (Austen)|The History of England]]'' was illustrated by Austen's sister, Cassandra ({{Circa|1790}}).]]

Among these works is a satirical novel in letters titled ''[[Love and Freindship]]'' {{sic}}<!-- well-known misspelling; do not alter -->, written when aged fourteen in 1790,<ref>Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 252</ref> in which she mocked popular [[Sentimental novel|novels of sensibility]].<ref>Litz (1965), 21; Tomalin (1997), 47; Honan (1987), 73–74; Southam (1986), 248–249</ref> The next year, she wrote ''[[The History of England (Austen)|The History of England]]'', a manuscript of thirty-four pages accompanied by thirteen watercolour miniatures by her sister, Cassandra. Austen's ''History'' parodied popular historical writing, particularly [[Oliver Goldsmith]]'s ''History of England'' (1764).<ref>Honan (1987), 75</ref> Honan speculates that not long after writing ''Love and Freindship'', Austen decided to "write for profit, to make stories her central effort", that is, to become a professional writer. When she was around eighteen years old, Austen began to write longer, more sophisticated works.<ref name="Honan, 93">Honan (1987), 93</ref>

In August 1792, aged seventeen, Austen started ''Catharine or the Bower'', which presaged her mature work, especially ''Northanger Abbey'', but was left unfinished until picked up in ''[[Lady Susan]]'', which Todd describes as less prefiguring than ''Catharine''.<ref>Todd (2015), 5; Southam (1986), 245, 253</ref> A year later she began, but abandoned, a short play, later titled ''Sir Charles Grandison or the happy Man, a comedy in 6 acts'', which she returned to and completed around 1800. This was a short parody of various school textbook abridgements of Austen's favourite contemporary novel, ''[[The History of Sir Charles Grandison]]'' (1753), by [[Samuel Richardson]].<ref>Southam (1986), 187–189</ref>
{{external media| float = left| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?95776-1/jane-austen-life Presentation by Claire Tomalin on ''Jane Austen: A Life'', 23 November 1997], [[C-SPAN]]}}

When Austen became an aunt for the first time aged eighteen, she sent new-born niece [[Fanny Knight|Fanny Catherine Austen Knight]] "five short pieces of ... the Juvenilia now known collectively as 'Scraps' .., purporting to be her 'Opinions and Admonitions on the conduct of Young Women{{' "}}. For Jane-Anna-Elizabeth Austen (also born in 1793), her aunt wrote "two more 'Miscellanious {{sic}} Morsels', dedicating them to [Anna] on 2 June 1793, 'convinced that if you seriously attend to them, You will derive from them very important Instructions, with regard to your Conduct in Life.{{' "}}<ref name="Le Faye 1993">{{cite book |last1=Austen-Leigh |first1=William |last2=Austen-Leigh |first2=Richard Arthur |last3=Le Faye |first3=Dierdre |title=Jane Austen: A Family History |date=1993 |publisher=The British Library |location=London |isbn=978-0-7123-0312-5 |pages=76–77}}</ref> There is manuscript evidence that Austen continued to work on these pieces as late as 1811 (when she was 36), and that her niece and nephew, Anna and James Edward Austen, made further additions as late as 1814.<ref>Sutherland (2005), 14; Doody (2014) 87–89</ref>

Between 1793 and 1795 (aged eighteen to twenty), Austen wrote ''[[Lady Susan]]'', a short [[epistolary novel]], usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.<ref>Honan (1987), 101–102; Tomalin (1997), 82–83</ref> It is unlike any of Austen's other works. Austen biographer [[Claire Tomalin]] describes the novella's heroine as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse her lovers, friends and family. Tomalin writes:

<blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ccc;">Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the [[Restoration comedy|Restoration dramatists]] who may have provided some of her inspiration&nbsp;... It stands alone in Austen's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.<ref>Tomalin (1997), 83–84; see also Sutherland (2005), 15</ref></blockquote>

According to Janet Todd, the model for the title character may have been [[Eliza de Feuillide]], who inspired Austen with stories of her glamorous life and various adventures. Eliza's French husband was guillotined in 1794 during the French Revolution's [[Reign of Terror]]; she married Jane's brother Henry Austen in 1797.<ref name = "Todd4"/>