Review: Love and Freindship by Jane Austen

Title: Love and Freindship (Note: this is the actual title of the book, not a typo!)
Author: Jane Austen
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Penguin
Publish Date: January 27, 2015
Source: I received a copy from the publisher; however, this did not affect my review.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Jane Austen’s earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven-years-old, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work. But it is also a product of the times in which she grew up—dark, grotesque, often surprisingly bawdy, and a far cry from the polished, sparkling novels of manners for which she became famous. Drunken heroines, babies who bite off their mothers’ fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these highly spirited pieces. This edition includes all of Austen’s juvenilia, including her “History of England” and the novella Lady Susan, in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. With a title that captures a young Austen’s original idiosyncratic spelling habits and an introduction by Christine Alexander that shows how Austen was self-consciously fashioning herself as a writer from an early age, this is a must-have for any Austen lover."

My Two Cents:

I was very excited to get my hands on Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship." As a big Austen fan, I was looking forward to this book as it's a collection of Austen's very early writings. It seems like a lot of times we don't get a chance to get to read a lot of things from writers early in their writing life. Unless the author is super famous, most of our reading is limited to whichever books were actually published. Because Jane Austen is such a prolific and famous writer, it's easy to see why so many people would have interest in reading some of the stories and other things that she wrote prior to publishing her books. This book almost feels as if you're getting a behind the scenes glance at what Austen was like is a younger person. Many of the stories were written when she was merely a teenager. And a lot of the hallmarks from some of her books that she went on to publish are there. She writes a lot of stories about love that are filled with fun and a lot of wit.

One thing that I found very interesting is that in this particular version, which is a Penguin Classics version (I collect the Penguin Classics - they are gorgeous), is that the publishers chose to keep a lot of the errors that Austen made it in the book. Even the title of the book is an Austen error with the misspelling of the word friendship. In some places, this makes the book a little bit difficult to read however I was driven by wanting to get more insight into one of my favorite classics authors! This book is a must-read for my fellow Austen lovers!