Book young Jane Austen course 2025

Comedy and Irony in the Young Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s writing career began in her early teens, with a series of spoofs and pastiches of contemporary fiction that were written to entertain her family and herself. Before she reached her mid-twenties, she had already drafted the first three of the published novels, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. Those novels were revised later, but the texts we have still show the spirit of those early writings: playful, comedic, irreverent, and ironic. This is the aspect of Austen’s mind and work that we will be focusing on in this course.

Four sessions, weekly on Sundays, from 4 May to 25 May 2025. With Fred Parker, Clare College, University of Cambridge

Set Reading

• Jane Austen, Teenage Writings, ed. Kathryn Sutherland and Freya Johnstone (Oxford, 2017)
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

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