Love and Friendship

Jane Austen’s “Love and Freindship” [sic] is an epistolary story, written in 1790 when she was fourteen, and dedicated to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide. Featuring improbable coincidences and turns of fate, In form, the story satirizes conventional romance novels of the time, and shows the early development of wit and observation that would make Austen one of the most famous of all British writers. Even the subtitle, “Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love”, shows a command of irony that Austen would later deploy in such classics as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility”.