Lesley Castle (Hesperus Classics)

By Jane Austen

Book Overview

Jane Austen, one of the nation's most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, few have come across... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1843911159
• ISBN13: 9781843911159
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Hesperus Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.4" x 4.8"

Customer Reviews

Early and Delicious Austen

Jane Austen's early work can never seem truly great to those readers who know her more mature novels, and that will be the case with Lesley Castle. Yet it is by no means to be treated with scorn. Lesley Castle is a delicious and amusing comedy presented to us as a series of letters written between two worldly and at times very cynical correspondents. In using this epistolary form the young Austen is imitating the works of the eighteenth Century masters (Richardson particularly comes to mind) and more than rivaling them. For what is most unusual in Austen is the authentic 'voice' of the upper class women she is describing. They stand before us, revealed in their letters, utterly convincing as examples of closely observed humanity. Richardson's women, though charming in their way, never had such energy. Reading this collection it's hard not to look for the ways her writing would develop later, into a more assured style. Yet it is here that we see how Austen honed those skills that make her mature novels' conversations so pleasing, so arch, so comic.