Love and Freindship [sic]

Jane Austen wrote this madcap little burlesque at fourteen, and its high spirits still crackle. Told through a run of letters, it follows Laura, who recounts her romantic misadventures to the daughter of an old friend as a supposed lesson in life. Austen skewers the fashionable novels of sensibility she grew up reading, with heroines who faint on cue, fall in love at a glance, and treat every stray feeling as sacred. The plot piles absurdity on absurdity: instant marriages, fortunes conveniently lost, a fatal carriage crash, and the immortal deathbed counsel to run mad as often as you please but never faint. It is early proof of the wit that would later shape her great novels. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available.