Perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories, and plays for her own and her family's amusement. Austen later compiled "fair copies" of these early works into three bound notebooks, now referred to as the "Juvenilia," containing pieces originally written between 1787 and 1793.

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey that makes her lighthearted satire of the gothic novel an even more satisfying read. Here is the complete text of the novel with more than 1,200 annotations on facing pages, including: -Explanations of historical context -Citations from Austen’s life, letters, and other writings -Definitions and clarifications -Literary comments and analysis -Maps of places in the novel -An introduction, bibliography, and detailed chronology of events -225 informative illustrations Filled with fascinating details about the characters’ clothing, furniture, and carriages, and illuminating background information on everything from the vogue for all things medieval to the opportunities for socializing in the popular resort town of Bath, David M. Shapard’s Annotated Northanger Abbey brings Austen’s world into richer focus.

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known principally for her five major novels which interpret, critique and comment upon the life of the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Her most highly praised novel during her own lifetime was Pride and Prejudice which was her second published novel. Her plots often reflect upon the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security. Austen's main novels are rarely out of print today though they were first published anonymously and brought her little personal fame with only a few glancing reviews during her lifetime. A significant transition in her posthumous reputation as an author occurred in 1869, fifty-two years after her death, when her nephew published A Memoir of Jane Austen which effectively introduced her to a wider public and reading audience. Austen's most successful novel in her own lifetime was Pride and Prejudice which went through two editions during her own life. Her third published novel was Mansfield Park which was largely overlooked by the professional reviewers though it was a great success with the public still within her lifetime. All five of her major novels were published for the first time between 1811 and 1818. From 1811 until 1816, with the premiere publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another one, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.

A collection of essays on the juvenilia of famous authors including Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

Perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories, and plays for her own and her family's amusement. Austen later compiled "fair copies" these early works into three bound notebooks,

A collection of poems, some of which had first appeared in Poetry, Blas, Others, The Little Review, and Arts and Letters.

Discovering Dylan Thomas is a companion to Dylan Thomas’s published and notebook poems. It includes hitherto-unseen material contained in the recently-discovered fifth notebook, alongside poems, drafts and critical material including summaries of the critical reception of individual poems. The introductory essay considers the task of editing and annotating Thomas, the reception of the Collected Poems and the state of the Dylan Thomas industry, and the nature of Thomas’s reading, ‘influences’, allusions and intertextuality. It is followed by supplementary poems, including juvenilia and the notebook poems ‘The Woman Speaks’, original versions of ‘Grief thief of time’ and ‘I fellowed sleep’, and ‘Jack of Christ’, all of which were omitted from the Collected Poems. These are followed by annotations beginning with a discussion of Thomas’s juvenilia, and the relationship between plagiarism and parody in his work; poem-by-poem entries offer glosses, new material from the fifth notebook, critical histories for each poem, and variants of poems such as ‘Holy Spring’ and ‘On a Wedding Anniversary’ (including a magnificent, previously unpublished first draft of ‘A Refusal to Mourn’). The closing appendices deal with text and publication details for the collections Thomas published in his lifetime, the provenance and contents of the fifth notebook, and errata for the hardback edition of the Collected Poems.