This piece can be found in R. W. Chapman’s edition of the Minor Works (pp. 240–2), just after the end of the unfinished ‘Catharine’, with Chapman’s heading: ‘Here follows a contribution to Evelyn by Jane Austen’s niece Anna Lefroy.’ But the last part of ‘Evelyn’ as we have printed it, and the last part of ‘Catharine’ seem also to be written—or written down at the very least—by someone other than Jane Austen. The most likely candidates as authors, or at least, scribes, of these additions are two children of Jane Austen’s brother James: Anna Austen (later to be Mrs Lefroy) and James Edward (later to be known as James Edward Austen-Leigh, Austen’s biographer). For information, and for discussions of the Austen family’s handwriting, we are grateful to Sally Brown, Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Museum, and Deirdre Le Faye, the latest editor of Jane Austen’s letters.8 (For further comment on the paragraphs of Volume the Third not written down by Jane Austen, see Textual Notes to pp. 183 and 228–9.)

Deirdre Le Faye has suggested that Jane Austen rediscovered her earlier manuscript notebooks when she unpacked the family belongings at Chawton in July 1809.9 Revisions and new material in ‘Evelyn’ and ‘Catharine’ indicate renewed work on these writings between 1809 and 1811. For instance, the date of a letter at the end of ‘Evelyn’ is ‘Augst 19th 1809’. In ‘Catharine’ the heroine’s friend Camilla refers to a ‘new Regency walking dress’ in a sentence that has been altered, presumably in order to make the fashion reference fit in with the new excitements over the Prince of Wales’s accession to power as Regent, with the Regency Act of 5 February 1811. (The Regency was indeed quickly reflected in the fashion pages of ladies’ magazines.) Anna Austen would have been 16 in 1809, and James Edward, 11; by the time ‘Catharine’ was finished—and for that time we must posit a date of at least 1811, possibly 1812—he would have been 13 or 14, quite old enough to engage in the writing game of participating in his aunt’s stories, and trying to finish them.

Did Jane Austen give this nephew and niece their own heads—and let them make what they liked of the stories in the notebooks? Or did they write partly or wholly under her guidance? There are no signs of dictation. There are some stylistic differences from Jane Austen’s own Juvenilia. Yet Jane Austen does not seem altogether absent—there is, for instance, the undersong of Cowper in the reference to Mrs Percival’s view of London as ‘the hot house of Vice’ (see note to p. 228), stylistic depths certainly beyond the power of the Anna who wrote the inserted pages. It is possible that Austen was conducting something a little like a very informal writing class, and that the contribution of the young writers received her attention and discussion before they entered it in the valued Volume.

One of the interesting points that emerges from this discovery is the part these notebooks played in Austen’s life. We can see that she was re-reading and revising the material of her teens, as well as enjoying the fresh access of a new and pleased audience between 1809 and 1811 (and possibly after that). The year 1811 is important to us for something other than the advent of the Regency; that was the year Sense and Sensibility was published. At last, Jane Austen was a published—and publishing—novelist. But in the years at the beginning of the century her career as a novelist had been perpetually frustrated. She failed to interest publishers in her work. She had sold a novel entitled Susan to Crosby in 1807 (or rather, her brother Henry sold it for her, for ten pounds), but Crosby never actually printed the work, and in 1809 she had to buy it back. We forget how much of failure there was in Jane Austen’s middle period, when she tried to write works that would appeal beyond the family circle, and to meet a public which was apparently indifferent. The advent of Anna and James Edward as interested readers and would-be writers may have been much more important for her confidence than we can imagine. Perhaps a little group of collaborators working on (and laughing at) ‘Evelyn’ in 1809 gave Jane Austen heart to continue in her life’s work. Certainly these early works were important companions to her during the rest of her writing career.

The manuscripts of the verses are not usually as interesting, and pose fewer problems—or at least fewer problems in relation to Jane Austen’s central career. The verses themselves are problematic enough simply because some manuscripts have disappeared, so we have had to rely on printed versions. Some manuscripts were not available to us. The central fact about the ‘Verses’ is that a verse that met the approval of family and friends could have several versions (of some sort) in circulation in Jane Austen’s own lifetime and later. Her family also contributed to editing and ‘polishing’ these works, most particularly her eldest brother James. (See ‘Maria, good-humoured, and handsome, and tall’, p. 244 and Textual Note on pp.