Love and Friendship Author:Jane Austen When a noble youth arrives unannounced to request the hand of the matchless Laura, it seems their future is one of contentment and bliss -- that is until his family learn of the marriage and, one by one, they reject the new bride. So begins a series of unspeakable events that Laura must confront and overcome, by way of the occasional fainting fi... more »t and bout of delirium.
Tragedy and comedy here go hand in hand as a very foolish young heroine is placed at the centre of Jane Austen's early satire on drawing-room society. Written as a series of letters, this book is a delicious romp through the highs and lows of a young girl's lot in life and a precursor of Austen's later works of genius.
"Love and Freindship" [sic] is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. From the age of eleven until she was eighteen, Jane Austen wrote her tales in three notebooks. The notebooks still exist, one in the Bodleian Library, the other two in the British Museum. They include among others Love and Freindship, written when Jane was fourteen, and The History of England, when she was fifteen. Written in epistolary form, like her later unpublished novella, Lady Susan, Love and Freindship is thought to be one of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family; it was dedicated to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, "La Comtesse de Feuillide". The instalments, written as letters from the heroine Laura, to Marianne, the daughter of her friend Isabel, may have come about as nightly readings by the young Jane in the Austen home. Love and Freindship (the misspelling is one of many in the story) is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. This is clear even from the subtitle, "Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love", which completely undercuts the title.« less