Audiobook · read by volunteers
Love and Freindship
Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Read by Cori Samuel · 3 chapters · 1 h 09
About the book
Jane Austen was fourteen when she wrote Love and Freindship, and already she knew exactly what she wanted to make fun of. The story is a lively parody of the sentimental novels she had read as a child. Its heroines faint at the slightest provocation, fall in love at first sight, declare eternal friendships and abandon every sensible principle in the name of feeling. Told in a series of letters, the tale races through absurd coincidences and outrageous behaviour with youthful glee. The spelling of the title is deliberately odd, and the book is full of such playful touches. Lasting about an hour and a quarter, it shows an early glimpse of Austen’s wit, years before her famous novels. A teenage Jane Austen already at her sharpest, and every bit as mischievous as her readers hope.
Introduction
Jane Austen (1775–1817) is celebrated as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion. Love and Freindship, written in 1790, belongs to her juvenilia, the early writings she produced for the entertainment of her family. The title contains a misspelling, one of many in the manuscript, and the editors who printed it often add the Latin word sic to show that it is not their error.
The story is told as a series of letters, and the recording divides them into three parts. It pokes fun at the conventions of sentimental fiction, in which characters were praised for their sensibility and for their willingness to be carried away by feeling. Austen’s later novels would treat such ideas with more nuance, but the seeds of her wit are already visible here. Readers who enjoy her mature work will find this youthful experiment an amusing curiosity.
It is short, silly and very funny, and it gives the listener a sense of the fun the young Austen had in writing it. A good choice for lovers of parody and of early literary comedy.
Three recordings, about 72 minutes in all, are read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Because the story is told in letters, it breaks naturally into the three sittings used here, and the subtitle, Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love, tells you what kind of ride to expect. A short, silly story is a good place to meet the young Jane Austen at her most mischievous. The story’s exaggerations, the heroines who faint and the friendships sworn in an instant, come across especially well in the ear, because a reader can play them completely straight.
Public domain
Jane Austen died in 1817: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text