Jane Austen\047s brilliant, hilarious - and often outrageous - early stories, sketches and pieces of nonsense, in a beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition. Jane Austen\047s earliest writing dates from when she was just eleven years, and already shows the hallmarks of her mature work: wit, acute insight into human folly, and a preoccupation with manners, morals and money. But they are also a product of the eighteenth century she grew up in - 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 mother\047s fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these very funny pieces. This edition includes all of Austen\047s juvenilia, including her \047History of England\047 - written by \047a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian\047 - and the novella \047Lady Susan\047, in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. Taken together, they offer a fascinating - and often surprising - insight into the early Austen. This major new edition is the first time Austen\047s juvenilia has appeared in Penguin Classics.