The Tedette’s Jane Austen Book Club gets their paws on Jane’s History of England

The Tedettes are fascinated by Jane Austen’s History of England, written when she was 16 years old.

Cassandra Austen illustrated the pages. People entertained themselves this way, bears, back in the Olden Days. They wrote their own light entertainment, they drew and painted, and they read books aloud and (amazing) they talked to each other. ‘Conversation’, this was called. There were no Bright-Box-Things to stare at, you see. So Jane and Cassandra had a fun writing their own version of the history of the Kings and Queens of England.

Jane and Cassandra had strong favourites among the kings and queens. They were very stern about those they disliked. If Cassandra didn’t like a monarch she drew them looking very cross.

The Tedettes’ own copy here is a facsimile version brought out by Folio Books. You can see young Miss Austen’s own handwriting!  (A book perhaps more easy for you to find, if you want to see it yourself, contains this History and other writings of the young Jane Austen, and is called “Sanditon, Lady Susan, & The History of England : The Juvenilia and Shorter Works of Jane Austen“.

You are in the web den of Mawson Bear, Ponderer of Baffling Things (between naps) and Writer-Bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In .

“Just pure magic.  A bear’s love is never far away and can be shared and passed on through generations.” Susan Hampson, of Books From Dawn To Dusk.