Love and Friendship by Jane Austen, Fiction, Classics

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. This is from Jane Austen's childhood, and despite their rough nature, they offer something of value: not just the insight they give us into Austen's thinking and her mind, but there is a certain charm here, a thing to value in its own. . . .

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.With the publications of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. Her novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her little fame during her lifetime. A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1869, fifty-two years after her death, when her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider audience.