cover image Jane Austen, Early and Late

Jane Austen, Early and Late

Freya Johnston. Princeton Univ, $29.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-691-19800-2

Jane Austen’s early works, often thought to be “childish effusions,” take center stage in this original survey from St. Anne’s College lecturer Johnston (Samuel Johnson). Johnston challenges the conventional theory that Austen’s juvenilia, written from 1787 to 1793, was simply a stepping stone to her novels. In fact, a clear delineation between early and late work faces knotty problems, she suggests, given that Austen returned to and revised her works throughout her life. The “ferocious parodic and observational bite” of Austen’s writerly beginnings stayed with her, Johnston writes, but by the time of her “mature” novels, changes in reader taste “weakened” the salability of edgy satire and led to softer prose. Johnston sometimes veers off on tangents, homing in, for example, on the change in later editions of the word innocent to ignorant in a passage from Pride and Prejudice (her sister’s suggestion). At the same time, Austenites will appreciate the historical context Johnston provides, such as Austen’s brother Frank’s views of slavery in Antigua, her family’s annotations of Goldsmith’s History of England, and the meaning of her final poem on St. Swithin. Students and devotees of Austen will appreciate the light shed on a lesser-known part of her career. (Sept.)