Volume the First: In Her Own Hand (Jane Austen: in Her Own Hand) - Hardcover

Austen, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789211726 ISBN 13: 9780789211729

Publisher: Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S., 2014

Synopsis

For the first time, all three volumes of Jane Austen’s brilliant early manuscripts are available in beautiful facsimile editions. Forever immortalized as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen actually produced her first “book” as a teenager, Volume the First. Taking its name from the inscription on the cover, this brilliant little collection includes the stories, playlets, verses, and moral fragments she wrote likely from ages twelve to eighteen. The volume was produced for the enjoyment of her family and close friends―entertaining it was and is! Now it is available for all of us to see. As a young author, Jane Austen delighted in language, employing it with great humor and surprising skill. She was adept at parodying the popular stories of her day and entertained her readers with outrageous plotlines and characters. Kathryn Sutherland’s introduction places Austen’s earliest works in context and explains how she mimicked even the style and manner in which this contemporary popular fiction was presented and arranged on the page. The work of a young adult, Volume the First nevertheless reveals the development of the unmistakable voice and style that would mark her as one of the most popular authors of all time. None of her six famous novels survives in manuscript. This is a unique opportunity to own a likeness of Jane Austen’s hand in the form of a complete manuscript facsimile. Volume the First, housed at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, includes the following stories: “Frederic & Elfrida,” “Jack & Alice,” “Edgar & Emma,” “Henry & Eliza,” “Mr Harley,” “Sir William Mountague,” “Mr Clifford,” “The beautifull Cassandra,” “Amelia Webster,” “The Visit,” “The Mystery,” “The three Sisters,” “Detached peices,” and “Ode to Pity.”

About this title

About the Author

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the most beloved novelists in the English language. Her novels Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion have left readers with a literary legacy hard to match by any author before or since. She lived all her life in England and died at the age of forty-one, leaving a literary legacy hard to match by any author before or since. Kathryn Sutherland is Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Jane Austen's Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood and the editor of the Digital Edition of Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Volume The First by Jane Austen

The Three Sisters
A Novel

Letter 1st

MISS STANHOPE TO MRS…

MY DEAR FANNY

I am the happiest creature in the World, for I have received an offer of marriage from Mr Watts. It is the first I have ever had & I hardly know how to value it enough. How I will Triumph over the Duttons! I do not intend to accept it, as least I believe not, but as I am not quite certain I gave him an equivocal answer & left him. And that you may be able to judge of his merits & the situation of affairs I will give you an account of them. He is quite an old Man, about two & thirty, ver plain so plain that I cannot bear to look at him. He is extremely disagreeable & I hate him more than anybody else in the world. He has a large fortune & will make great Settlements on me; but then he is very healthy. In short I do not know what to do. If I refuse him he as good as told me that he should offer himself to Sophia and if she refused him to Georgiana, & I could not bear to have either of them married before me. If I accept him I know I shall be miserable all the rest of my Life, for he is very ill tempered & peevish extremely jealous, & so stingy that there is no living in the house with him. He told me he should mention the affair to Mama, but I insisted upon it that he did not for very likely she would make me marry him whether I would or no; however probably he has before now, for he never does anything he is desired to do. I believe I shall have him. It will be such a triumph to be married before Sophy, Georgiana & the Duttons; And he promised to have a new Carriage on the occasion, but we almost quarreled about the color, for I insisted upon its being blue spotted with silver, & he declared it should be plain Chocolate; & to provoke me more said it should be just as low as his old one. I wont have him I declare. He said he should come again tomorrow & take my final answer, so I believe I must get him while I can. I know the Duttons will envy me & I shall be able to chaperone Sophy & Georgiana to all the Winter Balls. But then what will be the use of that when very likely he wont let me go myself, for I know he hates dancing & [has a great idea of Womens never going from home] what he hates himself he has no idea of any other person’s liking; & besides he talks a great deal of Women’s always Staying at home & such stuff. I believe I shant have him; I would refuse him at once if I were certain that neither of my Sisters would accept him, & that if they did not, he would not offer to the Duttons. I cannot run such a risk, so, if he will promise to have the Carriage ordered as I like, I will have him, if not he may ride in it by himself for me. I hope you like my determination; I can think of nothing better, And am your ever Affecte

MARY STANHOPE

Edition details

• Publisher: Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0789211726
• ISBN 13: 9780789211729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256