'Shorter Works' by Jane Austen

This is a collection of unfinished works and juvenilia and I highly recommend it to Austen fans. The juvenilia is remarkably brutal and far too scandalous to fit in with the traditional views of Austen. Of the novel fragments, her last work, Sanditon is clearly Austen, and yet has a different setting, both in class and in place than most of her work, I thought it was really interesting. Lady Susan was written when she was around eighteen and has the nastiest 'heroine' of any Austen story.

My edition is a part of a Folio set of Austen works, and keeps the original spelling. It is reassuring to know that someone who wrote prose so beautifully was such a terrible speller.

A couple of excerpts :

He told us that he was the son of an English baronet, that his mother had been many years no more and that he had a sister of the middle size - from Love and Freindship[sic] written when she was between twelve and fifteen.

He was in fact excellently qualified to shine at a round game; and few situations made him appear to greater advantage. He played with spirit, and had a great deal to say and tho' with no wit himself, could sometimes make use of the wit of an absent friend - from The Watsons one of the unfinished mature fragments. ( )