Biographie de l'auteur :
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various literary forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it. Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Her works, though usually popular, were first published anonymously and brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan culture.
Présentation de l'éditeur :
Jane Austen wrote the delightfully silly Love and Freindship and Other Early Works in her teenage years to entertain her family. With its endearingly misspelled title, the collection of brief experimental sketches reveals the making of one of the best-loved authors of British literature. In 'Love and Friendship' and 'Lesley Castle', Austen parodies the sentimental and Gothic novels of love at first sight, clandestine elopements, long-lost relatives, fainting, fatal riding accidents, adultery, and castles. In 'The History of England', Austen confirms that the only thing children learn in their classrooms are a few dates and some inconsequential, but usually scandalous, details about the personal lives of monarchs. Fundamentally, though, the stories demonstrate the lively mind and ready wit of a teenage girl living in the late eighteenth century.
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