The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte

by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë

This volume includes the early writings of Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. Austen's work includes "Frederic and Elfrida", "Edgar and Emma" and "Amelia Webster" while Bronte's includes "Origins of Angria", "The History of the Year", "Two Romantic Tales" and "The Rivals".

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Romance, Short Stories, 19th Century, Historical, Literary Fiction

ebook

First published October 7, 1986

About the author

Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.

The anonymously published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), were a modest success but brought her little fame in her lifetime. She wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1817—and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and the unfinished novel The Watsons.
Since her death Austen's novels have rarely been out of print. A significant transition in her reputation occurred in 1833, when they were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series (illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering and sold as a set). They gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience. Her work has inspired a large number of critical essays and has been included in many literary anthologies. Her novels have also inspired many films, including 1940's Pride and Prejudice, 1995's Sense and Sensibility and 2016's Love & Friendship.

Reviews

[Carmo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Austen - novembro 2021

Jane Austen escreveu estes contos/cartas/novelas entre os seus 12 e 17 anos. Escreveu, reviu, corrigiu e compilou em 3 volumes. É surpreendente! Tão novinha, a jovem Jane demonstra um sentido de observação, análise e critica que muitos adultos não dominam. As histórias são estapafúrdias na maioria, inacabadas, mas todas de um humor cortante. A graça de Jane vem do inesperado, do nonsence, da falta de misericórdia com que parodiou as suas vítimas.
Tenho algum receio da Jane adulta, só li uma das obras e não fiquei muito impressionada. Estou numa demanda Austeniana rigorosa, já devorei tudo o que encontrei de documentários e qualquer alminha que fale de Jane Austen tem a minha atenção. De seguida será a vez da biografia. Tenho para mim que só assim conseguirei entrar a preceito na obra adulta.

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3⭐
Outubro - 2020
A Juvenília de Charlotte Brontë foi escrita entre os anos de 1829 e 1839, e consta de histórias passadas num reino fictício, Angra, inventado por Charlotte e o irmão, Branwell.
Não se poderia esperar muito destes trabalhos precoces, ainda assim, no meio da salgalhada de personagens, terras inventadas, e ocorrências estrambólicas já se vislumbra uma mente observadora e criativa. Só na última história se encontra uma personagem feminina que se aproxima das mulheres independentes e rebeldes que irão marcar as suas obras futuras, todas as anteriores se mostraram irritantemente submissas e carentes.

Só li o referente a Charlotte, a parte que diz respeito a Jane Austen ficará para quando decidir ler as suas obras.

[Suzana Da Veiga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Austen tem uma escrita crítica e afiada desde as obras juvenis. Já Bronte dá ampla margem para a imaginação e fantasia. Essa obra permite ver a progressão das escritas dessas autoras fabulosas. Mas, justamente por ser escritos juvenis, as obras, por vezes, são inacabadas, algumas enfadonhas e a obra da Bronte sobre Angria tem partes ocultadas, outras não passadas a limpo, permitindo perder o fio condutor da história em alguns momentos. Para quem já leu as obras maduras das autoras, irá encontrar várias referências e inspirações para construção dos principais personagens como em Orgulho e preconceito e Jane Eyre. Ao final, fiquei com vontade de ler mais obras da Charlotte e reler os livros da Jane.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

After watching Jane Austen Regrets and reading this book, I feel like I know Jane Austen a lot better. Her Juvenilia is hilarious! Girls fainting constantly and running around not knowing what to do. It was pretty funny. I'm not a huge Bronte fan, do I didn't get very far into her Juvenilia. But I was impressed by how in depth her stories were.

[Thainara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Demorei duas décadas para ler esse livro, mas foi muito importante para conhecer um pouco mais dessas duas escritoras incríveis! Minhas partes preferidas do livro foram com certeza as cartas de dedicatória da Jane Austen, o diário da Charlotte Brontë e as notas comparando as antigas estórias aos aclamados romances de ambas. Para quem quer ser escritor também é interessante ver como elas reciclam ideias, matam e ressuscitam personagens, esquecem de outros, e depois acabam se tornando duas das maiores romancistas da literatura inglesa. Esse livro é uma prova de que ninguém nasce sabendo mesmo, como diriam nossas mães.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given the fame of Jane Austen's writings as well as Jane Eyre, it is little surprise that the childhood works of the authors (hereafter abbreviated as JA and CB so that I don't have to continually copy out the umlaut on Charlotte's last name) have been collected here so that readers can trace the development of both authors from their earliest assays at writing to their mature work.  The editor finds both similarities as well as differences in the path the two authors took, although I am (unsurprisingly) far more familiar with Austen's writings personally [1].  For the most part, reading both of the authors' childhood work is at least somewhat annoying, for although I prefer JA's work, even CB's work has its charms and one can see that the path they took as young writers honing their craft demonstrated the sort of writers they would become.  The practice that they took, in short, paved the way for their characteristic development as writers, and that is something useful for us to remember in our own reflection about the early writings we did where we mastered writing and demonstrated our emergent worldview.

The book as a whole is a bit more than 350 pages and is divided fairly equally into the writings of both JA and CB.  JA's juvenilia, or at least most of it, takes up the first part of the book.  Her manuscripts are divided into the three volumes as they were in her writing and most of her efforts are included, excepting her history of England (greatly entertaining, but not a work of fiction) as well as Lesley Castle and Evelyn.  In JA's writing, we see a great deal of wit and toughness of character and witness the author's growing mastery of characterization and the importance she places on characterization.  We also see, especially in such works as Love and Friendship, The Three Sisters, and especially Catharine, we witness characters who are capable of growth and depth and a high degree of dissatisfaction that JA has with the shortcomings of the world and women's place in it.  Likewise, CB's work demonstrates growth and increasing maturity as she deals with a romantic epic in true Victorian fashion, dealing with passions and love triangles and increasing moral complexity, which was to shape CB's adult works as well, and we even see a farewell to Angria that marks a clear break between her juvenilia and her mature work.

It is interesting to see the editor's work with the two authors.  JA's work, being witty and far less verbose, is treated with a very light editorial hand and is left more or less in place with brackets noting the author's own corrections to her manuscript.  On the other hand, as CB's writing is rather diffuse in true Victorian fashion, there is a large amount of lopping and cropping to keep the text in line.  Austen's writing ends up being slightly more than half of the material, but CB's writing is not short-changed and her poetry as well as the creaking, even epic plot with numerous resurrections of her Angria series of novels is treated with considerable respect.  Both of these collections of juvenile works are indeed well worth reading, especially if you like the adult novels of both authors, which have become staples of classic literature and read by generations of readers.  As is the case generally with Penguin Classics, this book is priced to sell and full of material that should be enjoyable to its target audience of readers of classic fiction.  There is much to appreciate here in the childhood works of both authors as they work towards maturity and depth. 

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

[.]

The pieces here by Austen were written between the ages of 12 and 18 and, while the longer stories can perhaps charitably be called underdeveloped, her comic writings rollick along at a tremendous pace. Characterisation takes a backseat as Austen deploys her barbed wit to lampoon the very social attitudes she is often mistakenly thought to represent.

Brontë's pieces, meanwhile, were written between the ages of 13 and 23 and seem to traverse the whole gamut of dark romanticism. There is a short but highly entertaining story of a voyage into the land of the genii, but most of these excerpts centre on a small cast of reoccurring characters. There is the villainous Lord Hartford, the mannish Zamorna and a rivalry between the ladies Mary and Mina. A typical scene: Zamorna would sternly explain how duty compels him to go off to war and the narrative would then linger heavily over a much protracted emotional fallout.

Don't think I'm judging; I hold both of these writers in the highest esteem and, however clunky, it was nothing short of a privilege to get a window into their early attempts at novelcraft.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The frustrating thing about this edition of the Austen-Bronte juvenilia is that they wrote so much that the editor had to cut large swathes of text. It does show us things about their lives that we don't always get in the better-known books, like JA's proximity to alcoholism or CB's uncritical acceptance of colonialism.

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amusing set of short stories, but are often difficult to follow because they are, after all, the works of inexperienced writers who have yet to emerge and hone their craft. Still, it's fun to find roots and themes of stories that I have read and enjoyed.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recomendo muito para quem tem medo da escrita de Jane Austen! Com textos menores, a autora consegue cativar e prender o leitor. Depois de se encantar com esse pequeno pedaço do talento de duas das maiores romancista inglesas da história, vale se aventurar em sua prosa completa.

[Christelle Jesudian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë was on 'my to read list' for a long time, and I'm so glad I finally read it. Both juvenilias show the precociousness of their authors, but while JA's juvenilia is witty (and often hilarious), CB's is more passionate, romantic, and gothic in her approach. You can see for both writers the early signs of how their subsequent writings were eventually shaped later on... This is fascinating material to read and to meditate on.

[Estella Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

i want to see a screen adaptation of love and friendship

[Natália · Rating 4 out of 5]

a juvenilia da Jane Austen: topissima
a juvenilia da Charlotte Bronte: oq tenho a ver

[Kirby]

Paused

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane gets five stars, Charlotte gets three. The stories Jane Austen wrote as a teenager are alomst as funny as her adult work, and I'm sorry that I now really HAVE read everything she wrote. However, though I love Jane Eyre, the stories of Angria written by the young Charlotte Bronte just don't interest me. Too much "man treats women poorly and they love him for it" for me.

[Michaela Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

ehh, why do we want to have everything our favorite author's wrote...their are limits to my appreciation

[Dusie Press]

Have read some of Angria...want more...

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for the Austen part - three (rather weak ones) for Brontë's.