Freya Johnston

By around 1787, the time that she left school, Jane Austen was already an avid reader, devouring pulp fiction and classic literature alike. What she read, she soon began to imitate and parody. Themes which appear subtly in Austen's later fiction run riot openly and exuberantly across these pages - drunkenness, brawling, sexual misdemeanour, theft, and even murder are all here. Join Oxford professor Freya Johnston as she explores the three surviving notebooks from the author’s teenage years, in this, Austen's bicentenary year.