Jane Austen and her works

JANE AUSTEN.
Jane Austen & Her Works
by
Sarah Tytler .
Steventon Rectory Hants
JANE AUSTEN AND HER WORKS .
BY SARAH TYTLER.
WITH A PORTRAIT ON STEEL.
Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.: LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK .
My intention in this book is to present in one volume to an over-wrought, and in some respects over-read, generation of young people the most characteristic of Jane Austen’s novels, together with her life. I think the tales and the life are calculated to reflect light on each other; I think, also, that the arrangement of the tales—which I have selected as the author wrote them, and not as they happened to be published, particularly in reference to the fact that the two which I have given first were written more than ten years before “Emma” and “Persuasion”—is an advantage, in permitting the growth of the author’s mind and taste to be recognised. I have used my own judgment in the selection of the stories, and in the degree and manner in which I have condensed them. It is with reverent hands that I have touched these great English novels, for the purpose of bringing them into such compass as may make them readily accessible to all, and especially to young readers, apt to be wearied by the slightest diffuseness. Wherever it has been possible, in view of my aim, I have used the author’s own words, as incomparably the best for the characters and situations. I have pointed out here and there the great changes in social standards, customs and fashions since Jane Austen wrote; while it is her glory that the human nature in her books and the human nature in every generation are the same. I have occasionally called attention to an unrivalled piece of art, which a too eager or an inexperienced reader may be in danger of overlooking.
So far from presuming to wish to draw readers from Jane Austen’s novels in their complete form, it is my earnest desire to send many a young student who may be tempted to quench her intellectual thirst at sources utterly unworthy of the great English novelist, to the originals of the tales I have abridged.