Intimations of Maturity in Jane Austen's Youthful Writing

Authors

  • Juliet McMaster

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/jjs110

Abstract

Notwithstanding the striking differences between Jane Austen’s novels, with all their subtlety and nuance, and her rowdy and  over-stated juvenilia, certain recurring elements of her fiction can be traced throughout: for instance, the recurring incident of the “bombshell signature” of the run-away couples, which appears in Henry & Eliza, Pride and Prejudice, and elsewhere.  Characters in The Three Sisters and Lesley Castle show signs of the kind of developing moral consciousness typical of the novels.

   The author writes as the illustrator of many of the juvenilia.

References

Austen, Jane. Emma. The Oxford Edition of Jane Austen’s Works, edited by R. W. Chapman, vol. 4. 3rd edition. Oxford UP, 1932.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. The Oxford Edition of Jane Austen’s Works, edited by R. W. Chapman, vol. 2, 3rd edition. Oxford UP, 1932.

Austen, Jane. The Beautifull Cassandra. Edited and illustrated by Juliet McMaster, Sono Nis Press, 1996 / Juvenilia Press, 2022.

Austen, Jane. Henry & Eliza. Edited by Karen L. Hartnick, illustrations by Sarah Wagner McCoy,foreword by Rachel Brownstein. Juvenilia Press, 1996.

Austen, Jane. Lesley Castle. Edited by Jan Fergus, illustrations by Juliet McMaster, Juvenilia Press, 1998.

Austen, Jane. The Three Sisters. Edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth, illustrations by Juliet McMaster, Juvenilia Press, 2004.

Burney, Frances. Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress.1884. Edited by Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody. Oxford UP, 1988.

Fergus, Jan. Introduction. Lesley Castle, by Jane Austen, Juvenilia Press, 1998, x–xvii.

Leavis, Q. D.“Jane Austen: A Critical Theory.”Collected Essays. vol 2, The Englishness of the English Novel, edited by G. Singh. Cambridge UP, 1983, pp.61–126.

Milton, John. “Il Penseroso.” The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by Helen Derbishire. Oxford UP, 1958, 424–28.

Sutherland, Kathryn. “A Writer’s Apprenticeship.” Introduction to her facsimile edition of Jane Austen’s Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. Abbeville Press, 2013.

Wiesenfarth, Joseph. “Jane Austen’s Family of Fiction: From Henry and Eliza to Eliza and Darcy.” Persuasions On-Line, vol.22, no. 1 (Winter 2001).

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Published

2023-12-27

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2023): Journal of Juvenilia Studies

Section

Peer-Reviewed Articles

License

The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license applies to all works published by the Journal of Juvenilia Studies and authors retain copyright of their work.