Love and Freindship (Illustrated‪)‬

Love and Freindship is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. From the age of 11 until she was 18, Jane Austen wrote her tales in 3 notebooks. The notebooks still exist – 1 in the Bodleian Library; the other 2 in the British Museum. They include among others Love and Freindship, written when Jane was 14, and The History of England, when she was 15.


Written in epistolary form, like her later unpublished novella, Lady Susan, Love and Freindship is thought to be 1 of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family. The installments, written as letters from the heroine Laura, to Marianne, the daughter of her friend, Isabel, "La Comtesse de Feuillide", may have come about as nightly readings by the young Jane in the Austen home. Love and Friendship (the misspelling is one of many in the story) is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. (Wikipedia)