Love and Friendship

Love and Friendship is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. Written in epistolary form like her later unpublished novella, Lady Susan, Love and Friendship is thought to be one of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family. It was dedicated to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, known as "La Comtesse de Feuillide". The instalments, written as letters from the heroine Laura, to Marianne, the daughter of her friend Isabel, may have come about as nightly readings by the young Jane in the Austen home. Love and Friendship is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. This is clear even from the subtitle, "Deceived in Friendship and Betrayed in Love", which undercuts the title.