Idolatry

I found a lovely little book at the library, by my favourite author Jane Austen: "Love and Friendship and Other Early Works", the swedish translation. This book was published in England 1922, more than a hundred years after Jane Austens death, and it´s a sample of her teenage work. You still recognize her, she has her style already and some of the characters are already taking shape, like Lydia, Willoughby and Mr Bennet. The jokes are at the expense of the folly, vanity and greed of Austens contemporaries. And because these traits are ever present in the human psyche and society, her books are real classics. Though perhaps this one will not be as much. It´s all a bit too adolescent.

A foreword by G K Chesterton informs the reader that these texts would have been written to amuse her family and friends, and most of them are in the shape of mock letters that would have been read aloud after dinner, much like real letters might have been in those days.

She also writes a short history of England, very biased and very funny, as a sort of defence for Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. I think I enjoyed that more than anything.

All in all, I think this is mostly for the hardcore Austen fans.