Many of the pieces in Volume the Second are dated by Jane Austen. ‘Love and Friendship’ is dated 13 June 1790, and ‘The History of England’ is dated November 1791. Some twelve pages were removed from this book at some point; the excision took place before the contents page was written out by the author. Jane Austen also numbered her pages continuously through the volume. Volume the Third is another vellum notebook; on the first leaf the author wrote, ‘Jane Austen—May 6th 1792.’ This notebook contains only ‘Evelyn’ and the ambitious unfinished novel entitled ‘Catharine, or the Bower’ (originally ‘Kitty, or the Bower’). The ‘Dedication’ of ‘Catharine’ is dated August 1792. In 1792 Jane Austen was only 17.

The author was truly ‘Very Young’, as noted by her father. The Revd George Austen wrote on the inside front cover of Volume the Third, ‘Effusions of Fancy by a very Young Lady Consisting of Tales in a Style entirely new’. Austen’s tales are certainly ‘in a Style entirely new’, but they are not to be described as ‘Effusions of Fancy’. They bear all the signs of careful workmanship, and of reworking. It seems most likely that Austen wrote some first version(s) of these works somewhere else, perhaps on scrap paper, and then copied them in a (reasonably) fair hand into the notebooks. This process of writing down itself involved constant revision and rewording, even while a sentence was in progress. The ‘Textual Notes’ we have supplied in this present edition give the reader an idea of the young Jane Austen’s engagement in the process of writing. We wished to give the reader not only a readable printed text, but the closest possible indication of the nature of the manuscripts. Fortunately the notebooks are now all available to scholars; Volume the First is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Volumes the Second and Third in the British Museum.

On looking at the manuscripts we can see that many changes seem to have been executed at the time of writing (or copying-rewriting); some alterations are merely the correction of errors (the equivalent of typos). But one wonders about the purport of some marked differences between an earlier and a later version of the text. The very first ‘Tale’ in Volume the First, for instance, ‘Frederic and Elfrida’, begins, ‘The Uncle of Elfrida was the Mother of Frederic.’ Did Austen merely miswrite, and then quickly correct? Or did she commit an outrageous joke and then have second thoughts?

Some changes in the manuscript of a tale refine the comedy, as at the end of the second paragraph of ‘Frederic and Elfrida’. Originally, the sentence reads, ‘They … were both determined not to transgress the rules of Propriety by owning their attachment to any one else’ (see Textual Note to p. 3). This has been changed so that the ending reads ‘by owning their attachment, either to the object beloved, or to any one else’—a considerable heightening of the humour, partly through a pointed refinement of literary parody, with novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4) and Frances Sheridan’s Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761–7) in mind.

Austen’s revisions sometimes trim down an elaborated effect, as is the case near the beginning of ‘Love and Friendship’: ‘we were on a sudden, greatly astonished, considerably amazed and somewhat surprized’ (see Textual Note to p. 78). Austen evidently felt—or came to feel—that this deliberate diminuendo detracted from the general comic effect of the conversation about rapping on the door which follows, and so struck it out.

Many of the deletions and revisions reveal the high-spirited comic sense of the very young woman who wrote this material. In ‘The History of England’ Jane Austen has the following comment about Lady Jane Grey’s reading Greek: ‘Whether she really understood that language or whether such a Study proceeded only from an excess of vanity for which I believe she was always rather remarkable, is uncertain’ (p. 139). But the original sentence did not contain the standard moralizing word ‘vanity’—it went thus: ‘Whether she really understood that language or whether such a Study proceeded only from an excess of Cockylorum … is uncertain’ (italics by JA). The formula of judgement, of restrained objective speculation (‘Whether … is uncertain’), is shafted by the impudent presence of the impudently colloquial word. The OED defines ‘cockalorum’ in terms of a person: ‘Little cock, bantam; self-important little man.’ But the quality of cockalorum (or ‘cockylorum’) is over-confidence, the source of boastful high spirits. In this case, Austen’s revision tames her sentence, partly perhaps in order not to let this mock-historian persona deviate from the kind of vocabulary historians will use.

There are some puzzles hidden in these manuscripts. Particular problems are posed by Volume the Third in which there are substantial passages in hands other than Austen’s. One piece we have eliminated from the present volume; in the original it is several pages inserted into the notebook, rather than forming part of the Volume proper.