Image of Love and Friendship

Love and Friendship

by Jane Austen

Begun when she was just eleven years old, Love and Friendship is one of Jane Austen's stories that very few readers may have encountered before. Austen experts feel that this story was written, like many others, only for the pleasure of her family and friends. It is scribbled across three notebooks, in childish handwriting, and the complete work is thought to have been written over a period of six or seven years. It is dedicated to one of her cousins, whom she was very close to, Eliza de Feuillide. Eliza herself was an extremely colorful figure and is thought to have been the illegitimate daughter of the first Governor General of India, Warren Hastings. She was also a witness to the French Revolution where her husband, the self styled Comte de Feuillide was guillotined. For the young Jane, these events must have been sheer inspiration to a writer's imagination. Love and Friendship takes the shape of an expostulatory novel. Written as a series of letters from Laura to a much younger Marianne who is her friend Isabel's daughter, it is meant to apprise the young and flighty Marianne about the dangers of infatuation and falling headlong into romantic love. The book offers an early and crucial insight into Jane Austen's style, her wonderful sense of humor and her take on contemporary society. At times, she portrays events almost in parody form, at others, she is sharp and critical, but as always, the typical Jane Austen brand of gentle, sparkling wit is highly evident. She describes the concept of “sensibility” or what we would today call “sensitivity” or “sentimentality” and how it can be taken to ridiculous extremes. The deliberately twisted and complicated plot is replete with fainting fits, deaths due to a variety of causes, including “galloping consumption,” plenty of drama, elopements galore, unbelievable coincidences and wicked philanderers—all the elements that a typical potboiler of the era would contain.

Book Details

Language

English

Original Language

English

Published In

1790

Authors

Jane Austen image

Jane Austen 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...

Books by Jane Austen

Listen/Download Audiobook

Read by:
00:00
Playback Speed 1.0
00:00
  • Select Speed

Related books

Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret Cover image

Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dr. Grimshawe is a spider-cultivating eccentric. The central secret of the book is an all-encompassing spiders web. The central character is loosely b...

Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! Cover image

Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! by Selma Lagerlof

Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! is a 1912 novel by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf. It was translated into English by William Frederick Harvey in 1921....

Buch der Lieder Cover image

Buch der Lieder by Heinrich Heine

Nicht ohne Befangenheit übergebe ich der Lesewelt den erneueten Abdruck dieses Buches. Es hat mir die größte Überwindung gekostet, ich habe fast ein g...

Camilla Cover image

Camilla by Fanny Burney

Camilla, Frances Burney's third novel, delves into the complexities of love, courtship, and societal expectations in late 18th-century England. The st...

Нездешние вечера (Otherwhere Nights) Cover image

Нездешние вечера (Otherwhere Nights) by Mikhail Kuzmin

The collection of poems \"Otherwhere Nights\" by Mikhail Kuzmin was written in the turbulent years of the First World War and the Russian Revolution....

Safo Cover image

Safo by Alphonse Daudet

Safo is a novel by Alphonse Daudet that explores the passionate and complicated relationship between Juan, a young man from the provinces, and Safo, a...

Sonnet 116 Cover image

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

LibriVox volunteers bring you seventeen recordings of Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of October 15...

Witness Cover image

Witness by Grace Livingston Hill

In "Witness", Grace Livingston Hill tells the story of Paul Cortland, a successful college athlete who finds himself facing a profound crisis. Tragedy...

Tis the Last Rose of Summer Cover image

Tis the Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore

'Tis the Last Rose of Summer' is a poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore, first published in 1808. The poem is a lament for the passing of summer and the lo...

Moods Cover image

Moods by Louisa May Alcott

A story of love, loss, and redemption. Moods is a novel by Louisa May Alcott that tells the story of Sylvia Yule, a young woman who is struggling to...

Reviews for Love and Friendship

No reviews posted or approved, yet...