Written when Jane Austen was just fourteen or fifteen years old, Love and Freindship (the misspelling is in the original manuscript) is a wickedly funny epistolary burlesque of the sentimental fiction popular in the 1780s. Its heroines faint with operatic frequency, espouse fashionable sensibility without a shred of real feeling, and behave with magnificent inconsistency — all of which young Austen punctures with devastating comic precision.
Already recognisably Austen’s work in its irony and wit, this juvenile piece offers a delightful glimpse of a great novelist in the making. Download this free EPUB from Better Gutenberg for the complete text.