Love & Friendship Written by: Jane Austen

If this was how one behaved in the past and was treated as a Lady I most certainly am proud to be a woman of today. This book was a tough read, I understand that the first installment was written when Jane was 11, and it really shows compared to her later work. Though, I do get the that Austen was having a fun time making fun of a lot of the characters in her letters and pointing out all their bloated flaws…still at times I found myself wishing I could just put it down as her characters were really quite horrible. It almost seems like she was an adolescent/young teenager who was writing her first parodies making fun of other romantic novels and their cast of characters. As if she were blowing up every characters subtle flaws that may scream out loud to a few she wanted to make sure everyone realize most of these men and ladies behavior was just obnoxious and unbelievable. These were a bunch of short stories written by Jane from age 11 to age 18 I could appreciate her jokes and how she made fun of so many outlandish characters who though they saw their plights and the blows life dealt them as unjust really for the most part they were the ones at fault and so blinded by themselves. I just had a tough time getting into these first letters the large portion of the book was just so ridiculous then again I have hindsight on my side and the language of yesterday was somewhat confusing to me. The next portion of the book is the History of England…and again it is a very interesting writing style and concept with how the crown and royal family came to be, but perhaps I don’t know enough English History/the Royal family to really appreciate this part of the book. The rest of the book consists of random letters and short letters between people that seemed like quite a few could have been turned into a novel on their own but instead were just giving us a little piece of what Austen was thinking at the time. This book since it had so many errors in spelling and structure was at times a bit all over the place, but since it was written so separately and without any real plot flow I was able to read this at my leisure and gawk at the tales themselves. So, was this a favorite of mine? No, but it was amusing to say the least.