These inventive and entertaining pieces display the genesis of the wit and imagination of Jane Austen’s mature fiction, and are by turns amusing, acerbic, and occasionally downright silly. The stories “Love and Friendship” and “Lesley Castle” provide parodies of the gentry and the fashionable idea of sensibility of the time, while “A History of England” is a lively chronicle of English monarchic history. Also included in this collection are “The Three Sisters,” “Catharine,” and the series of vignettes known as “A Collection of Letters.”