17th & 18th Century Titles
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Sir Charles Grandison by Jane AustenStarting at sixteen and later collaborating with her little niece Anna, Jane Austen composed a dramatic version, playfully abbreviated, of Richardson’s long novel Sir Charles Grandison. Edited from the manuscript, this edition comes with full notes and suggestions on production. Edited by Lesley Peterson and Sylvia Hunt, with others |
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The Beautifull Cassandra by Jane Austen, with Illustrations and Afterwords by Juliet McMasterThe Beautifull Cassandra is a delightful story about a pleasure-loving young female who falls in love with a bonnet and braves the world. It will have a particular appeal for children in being written by one themselves. Jane Austen, on her way to becoming a great novelist, wrote it when she was probably only twelve, some 200 years ago. |
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Sophia Elizabeth Burney's "Works" and "Novels, Plays, and Poems"Enlivened by gusts of boisterous and often violent humour, these novels, plays and poems by thirteen-year-old Sophia Burney raise many of the same gender and class issues that her famous aunt Frances Burney explored in Evelina. The collection reflects the creative culture of this talented and productive family. Edited by Lorna J. Clark with Sarah Rose Smith |
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Hannah, More's A Search after Happiness: A Pastoral DramaWritten between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, A Search after Happiness (1773) is Hannah More’s first serious work on the subject of women’s education. True to the pastoral tradition, the play traces the moral growth of its four young female protagonists under the gentle guidance of an ancient shepherdess. More’s early literacy and linguistic assuredness foreshadows her later role as an influential eighteenth-century educator, writer and social reformer. Edited by David Owen & Others |
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Maria Edgeworth's The Double DisguiseThe Double Disguise heralds the regional novel that Maria Edgeworth was to pioneer in Castle Rackrent(1800). Written at eighteen and now published for the first time, this dramatic comedy includes Edgeworth’s first Irish character sketch and her first attempt at Hiberno-English. We encounter her budding interest in the realistic characterisation, language and setting that were to become trademarks of her adult writing. Edited by Christine Alexander and Ryan Twomey |
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Sarah Fyge Egerton's The Female Advocate"Though Man had Being first, yet methinks She / In Nature should have the Supremacy." The measured militancy of The Female Advocate (1686) breathes fresh air into the age-old battle of the sexes. Though the author entered the fray while still in her teens, in making her statement she creates a compelling poem. It is presented here, for the first time, in an edition with full critical apparatus. Edited by Peter Merchant, with Steven Orman |
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Jane Austen's The History of England & Cassandra’s PortraitsWritten "By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian", this History of England is an outrageous parody of the schoolroom history book. Together with her elder sister Cassandra, the fifteen-year-old Jane Austen reduces the heroic to the everyday, vigorously endorses Mary, Queen of Scots, and denounces Elizabeth I. This edition explores the collaboration between the sisters and the way Cassandra’s illustrations extend the textual allusions to family and friends, revealing some surprises. Edited by Annette Upfal and Christine Alexander. |
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Jane Austen's MenRakes, fools, takers, losers: in these four brief tales featuring male protagonists, young Jane Austen’s men fall victim to her fierce feminist pen. This volume contains the only stories ever written by Austen that follow men into their private lives. Edited by Sylvia Hunt and others with illustrations by Juliet McMaster |
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Jane Austen's Three Mini-DramasJane Austen became anovelist, not a playwright.But her engagement withthe stage in these threemini-dramas shows awonderfully inventiveresponse to the theatre ofher time, and a sportivedemonstration that shetoo can handle a scene and present character through dialogue. Edited by Juliet McMaster, Lesley Peterson and others with illustrations by Juliet McMaster, Zoe Share and Allison Yung |
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Jane Austen's Lady SusanLady Susan is Jane Austen’s depiction of the attraction of evil. Written when the author was nineteen, this early letter novel is a brilliantly cynical study of high society. In Lady Susan we experience the malicious wit and energy of the early writings and glimpse the polish and sophistication of her laternovels. Edited by Christine Alexander and David Owen. |
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Jane Austen's A Collection of LettersThis young author revels in a youthful, uncensored pleasure in wild exaggerations of literary conventions, but is moving, nonetheless, towards a more intricate and cautious mode of story-telling which details the realities of domestic lives and social manners. Edited by Juliet McMaster and others. |
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Jane Austen's Amelia Webster and The Three SistersA minimalist epistolary romance, and a wicked take-off of sisterly rivalry. In this little edition of two of Jane Austen's juvenilia, probably written at ages 12 and 15, the young novelist turns the spotlight on both the possibilities and the absurdities of the epistolary mode. Edited by Juliet McMaster and others. |
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Jane Austen's Catharine or the BowerAppearing in Jane Austen's third and final "Volume" of juvenile works, Catharine is far more than the "Effusions of Fancy by a very Young Lady." … Rather, it is an ambitious attempt at serious fiction that marks a significant transitional point in Austen's development as a writer. Edited by Juliet McMaster and others. |
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Jane Austen's EvelynEvelyn depicts a voracious hero who gets everything and keeps wanting more. Writing at about age 16, Jane Austen explores the disparity between her hero's exhilarating freedom from social constraints and her own necessary compliance with the demands of a rigidly ordered society, between a fictive superabundance of food, money and accommodation and the realities of everyday life in the Austen household, with its restrained gentility and plainly limited resources. Edited by Peter Sabor and others. |
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Jane Austen's Frederic & ElfridaA humorous crash course in conventional novel patterns and the intricacies of "Propriety." We see in it besides the young author's purposeful carving away of the novelist she will not be, and her early shaping of the novelist she will become. Edited by Peter Sabor, Sylvia Hunt, and Victoria Kortes-Papp. |
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Jane Austen's Henry and ElizaWritten by Jane Austen at age 12, 13, or 14, Henry and Eliza turns the story of the traditional novel heroine on its head as Eliza lives out the traditional male adventure -- she leaves her family, travels, faces danger, demonstrates cunning and bravery, and defeats her enemies in armed battle. Only in the juvenilia would Jane Austen allow her heroine a hero's rewards... Edited by Karen L. Hartnick with Rachel M. Brownstein and others. |
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Jane Austen's Jack & Alice: A NovelWritten by Jane Austen when only 13 or 14 years old, this outrageous tale features a boozy heroine and a stunningly handsome hero. Behind all the exuberant madness of Jack & Alice is a teenager of genius who revels in the ridiculous and dearly loves the game of words. Edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth and others. |
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Jane Austen's Lesley CastleIn Lesley Castle, the teenage Jane Austen sets up Gothic expectations which she then wickedly subverts. This outrageously funny fiction has enough plot for two or three novels: an adulterous elopement, divorce and remarriage, a bridegroom's fatal riding accident before his wedding, and an elderly father's sudden remarriage to a much younger woman ... Edited by Jan Fergus and others. |
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Jane Austen's Love and FreindshipA young genius gloriously and uninhibitedly letting her hair down, piling joke upon joke, hyperbole on hyperbole ... a resounding parody of the novel of sensibility ... hilarious burlesque. Love and Freindship is arguably the funniest short work of fiction in the English language. Edited by Juliet McMaster and others. |
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Jane Austen's The Beautifull Cassandra
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Jane Austen's The History of EnglandWritten by a self-styled "partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian" at age 15, this is an outrageous parody of the schoolroom history book. Here the youthful Jane Austen and her sister (age 18) make sure more women are included, and cheerfully get revenge on conventional histories which chronicle only "the quarrels of popes and kings." With illustrations by Cassandra AustenEdited by Jan Fergus and others. |
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Jane Austen's The Three SistersMr Watts is a single man in possession of a good fortune who is in want of a wife, and Mrs Stanhope is mother of a family of girls who is very much in want of a son-in-law. This satiric narrative of courtship and self-interest by the young Jane Austen reads like a humorous trial run for Pride and Prejudice. Edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth, Laura Maestrelli and Kristin Smith; with illustrations by Juliet McMaster. |
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Lady Mary Pierrepont (later Montagu)'s Indamora to LindamiraA charming and funny story of love and honour, hitherto unpublished. The world of Lady Mary's Indamora is one of youthful optimism. It is a dangerous place of duels, shipwrecks, and sudden mortal diseases, but you can count on these disasters leaving the good untouched. Edited by Isobel Grundy. |
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Lady Mary Pierrepont (later Montagu)'s The AdventurerA romance in prose and verse about the hero's eventful but fruitless visit to the Isle of Love. In this allegorical tale, the 14-year-old Lady Mary Pierrepont expresses all the jaded wisdom of a writer with absolutely no romantic experience. The result is one of the most captivating epistolary romances of 1704, never before available in print. Edited by Isobel Grundy and others. |
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Anna Maria Porter's Artless TalesA series of highly decorative tales of love and war, crusades and witchcraft, lovely ladies, handsome knights, and a cross-dresser or two, by a girl who managed to publish at 13. Edited by Juliet McMaster, Leslie Robertson, and others. |