ABSTRACT
As we have seen, “Love and Freindship” can stand alone as a very funny burlesque, for one can readily deduce the kind of novel it bounces off. Nevertheless, it is worth examining it in relation to its satirical targets, to discover the artfulness of this teenager’s response to novels that were familiar to her and her circle, though not to most of us in the twenty-first century. Of course there were many examples of the novel of sensibility, and Austen’s parody is directed at more than one or two of them. But where a particular butt of her parody can be identified, a comparison of the texts can provide new insights into Austen’s taste and artifice.
