Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on Jane Austen, Julia Epstein - Jane Austen At Work

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JANE AUSTEN AT WORK

GETTING ESTABLISHED

As a child, Jane Austen seems to have been relatively unsentimental, humorous, and teasing, perhaps because the boys' school run by her father provided an environment of rowdiness and high jinks. She began writing down her ideas on scraps of paper almost as soon as she could write, and she wrote sketches for her own amusement, and soon for the amusement of her parents, siblings, and extended family members. The first pieces we have were probably composed between 1787 and 1793, when she was twelve to eighteen. Few of the juvenile writings are dated, so the dates scholars have assigned are derived from the little evidence that exists and the recollections of family members.

Austen fair copied her juvenile writings into three carefully tended notebooks consisting of twenty‐seven pieces of varying lengths and levels of polish. These quarto notebooks were likely gifts; we know that her father gave her the one she...

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1. Introduction
2. Chronology
3. About Jane Austen
4. Jane Austen At Work
5. Jane Austen's Era
6. Jane Austen's Works
7. Jane Austen As Studied
8. Copyright

1. Jane Austen