Listen to co-curator Juliette Wells discuss Jane Austen’s teenage writings and early ambition to become a published author.
A DETERMINED YOUNG AUTHOR
Jane Austen began writing short, experimental fiction in her early teens, cheered on by her family, to whom she dedicated many pieces. She preserved fair copies of these works in a set of three manuscript volumes. This, the second, includes her notation in Latin, “Ex dono mei patris”: “The gift of my father.” In addition to buying his younger daughter a blank book—no small expense at the time—Rev. Austen supported her ambitions by offering one of her novels to the London publisher Thomas Cadell in 1797. The effort was unsuccessful. Cassandra, who contributed illustrations to “The History of England,” passed this volume down to their brother Francis (“Frank”), as evident from her notes on the flyleaf.
Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Volume the Second
Autograph manuscript, 1790–93
British Library, London; Add MS 59874
Jane Austen’s teenage writings are remarkable both for their content and for the way that the young author chose to present them in written form.
The stories are inventive and often quite irreverent. They demonstrate that Austen was well read in the fiction and nonfiction of her day, and they show that she had given considerable thought to conventions of storytelling. Several of the works are just a few pages long. Yet even in such a short span, Austen treats multitudes of adventures. She jokes about subjects, like death and sexual seduction, that she would treat much more seriously in her full-length novels.
Austen’s pride in these compositions is evident from how carefully she copied them into bound volumes. Her aspiration to become a published author is clear, too, from the way she formatted the books. At the time, novels were usually published in three-volume sets, as you’ll see later in this exhibition, beginning with the first-edition copy of Sense and Sensibility. So, by organizing her youthful writings into “Volume the First,” “Volume the Second,” and “Volume the Third,” the young Austen was creating something that looked very much like a novel.