Love and Freindship

The misspelling of "Friendship" as "Freindship" is actually Jane Austen's own, retained in the original manuscript and modern publications to preserve her personal spelling. She wrote this short epistolary novel in 1790 when she was only fourteen years old. It is a satirical work poking fun at the hyper-romantic tropes of late 18th-century literature.

The story follows Laura and her friend Sophia as they navigate a ridiculous series of fainting fits, sudden marriages, and tragic deaths. It is structured as a series of dramatic letters from Laura to her daughter, Marianne. The plot deliberately exaggerates the extreme sensibility and melodrama popular in novels of that era.

Jane Austen uses the novella to parody the "cult of sensibility" by having her characters faint constantly and react to minor inconveniences with life-ending shock. For example, characters frequently die on the spot from sudden emotional distress or unexpected hunger. Austen highlights the absurdity of these contemporary literary tropes by pushing them to their logical, comedic extremes.

Jane Austen wrote "Love and Freindship" in 1790, firmly placing it within her early "Juvenilia" collection. She composed the work at the age of fourteen as an entertaining exercise for her family. It was not published during her lifetime but was later released alongside her other early writings in the 20th century.