Long before the quiet wit of her novels, Jane Austen was writing uproarious stories for a lively audience at home. Three notebooks preserve short pieces she wrote from childhood into her teens.
The earliest may date to 1786 or 1787; the latest dated piece is from 1793. These were not private diary pages. Austen’s family and friends read them, and their covers—Volume the First, Second, and Third—playfully borrow the form of published novels. The well-thumbed notebooks suggest that the writing circulated often, perhaps even in family performances.
In one youthful satire, The History of England, Austen mocks the solemn schoolbook voice and casts herself as a knowingly biased narrator. Her sister Cassandra illustrated the monarchs. The sharpness is already there, but so is the pleasure of sharing a joke with readers who know its targets.