ABSTRACT
In this essay, John C. Leffel offers a concise survey of the juvenilia’s composition, publication, and reception history; examines the prominent role of ‘transgression’ in the early works’ formal, stylistic, and generic construction and orientation as well as in Austen’s creation of characters and plots; and offers succinct critical readings of specific texts, including Henry and Eliza, The Beautifull Cassandra, Jack and Alice, and Catharine, or the Bower, to highlight the early writings’ spirited engagement with many of the social and political issues and concerns—particularly those relating to the intersections among money, marriage, mobility, and women’s subjectivity and agency—that scholars have analysed in Austen’s published novels.
