Love And Friendship And Other Early Works

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. ‪
Written in epistolary form, Love and Freindship is thought to be one of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family; it was dedicated to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, "La Comtesse de Feuillide". The instalments, written as letters from the heroine Laura, to Marianne, the daughter of her friend Isabel, may have come about as nightly readings by the young Jane in the Austen home. Love and Freindship is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. 
In form, it resembles a fairy tale as much as anything else, featuring wild coincidences and turns of fortune, but Austen is determined to lampoon the conventions of romantic stories, right down to the utter failure of romantic fainting spells, which always turn out badly for the female characters.