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A reexamination of Austen’s unpublished writings that uncovers their continuity with her celebrated novels—and that challenges distinctions between the writer’s “early” and “late” periodsJane Austen’s six novels, published toward 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. Austen’s 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 Can the novels be definitively separated from the unpublished works?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 humour 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 favour 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.--

Austen, Jane, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Amendment. --- Anna Maria Porter. --- Anne Elliot. --- Author. --- Book. --- Bree (Middle-earth). --- Cassandra Austen. --- Catholic Church. --- Charlotte Lennox. --- Claire Tomalin. --- Clarissa. --- Claudia L. Johnson. --- Correction (novel). --- Debut novel. --- Diary. --- E. M. Forster. --- Early Period. --- Edition (book). --- Elinor Dashwood. --- Eliza de Feuillide. --- Elizabeth Bennet. --- Elizabeth Bishop. --- Emma (novel). --- Emma Woodhouse. --- Emmeline. --- Epigraph (literature). --- Epistle. --- Essay. --- Evelina. --- Fairy tale. --- Fanny Hill. --- Fanny Price. --- Felicia Hemans. --- Fiction. --- Fictional universe. --- First Story. --- Frances Burney. --- G. K. Chesterton. --- Hannah More. --- Hester Thrale. --- Historical romance. --- Inception. --- Intention. --- J. M. Barrie. --- Jane Austen. --- Janet Todd. --- John Cleland. --- Jude the Obscure. --- Juvenilia. --- Lady Susan. --- Life and Letters. --- Literary genre. --- Literary modernism. --- Mansfield Park. --- Manuscript. --- Margaret Tudor. --- Maria Edgeworth. --- Marianne Dashwood. --- Marriage plot. --- Martha Lloyd. --- Mary Brunton. --- Mary Crawford (Mansfield Park). --- Mary Musgrove. --- Mary Russell Mitford. --- Mary Wollstonecraft. --- Memoir. --- Middle age. --- Miss Bates. --- Mrs. --- N. (novella). --- North America. --- Northanger Abbey. --- Novel. --- Novelist. --- Parody. --- Persuasion (novel). --- Poetry. --- Point of Origin (novel). --- Prediction. --- Preface. --- Publication. --- Regency novel. --- Routledge. --- Samuel Taylor Coleridge. --- Sanditon. --- Sense and Sensibility. --- Sentimental novel. --- Sequel. --- Sir Francis Drake (TV series). --- Susan Gubar. --- The Beautifull Cassandra. --- The Female Quixote. --- The History of England (Austen). --- The History of England (Hume). --- The Light of Day (Graham Swift novel). --- The Years. --- Waverley Novels. --- William Hone. --- Writer. --- Writing. --- England --- -Social life and customs --- Social life and customs