Jane Austen: Minor Works Trivia Quiz

Answer: A skit on showers ruining the Winchester races

Jane Austen's poems have been criticised as not being great, like her novels. This misses the point entirely. They are purely domestic entertainment, which is probably how her stories started out as well. The poems all concern members of the family or local situations like this one about the Winchester races, or are simply for amusement.

As far as I'm aware she never wrote a "mock lament on the sorrows of illness", although it would have been entirely in character for her to have done so. It certainly speaks much for her fortitude that she managed to write such a lighthearted piece when she was in great pain and probably (for all she knew) did not have long to live.

Answer: Her father and mother

Parker, the writer of "A letter from a young lady whose feelings being too strong for her Judgement led her into the commission of Errors which her Heart disapproved" (from Jane Austen's collection "Scraps"), says in her second line: "I murdered my father at a very early period of my Life, I have since murdered my Mother, and I am now going to murder my Sister." (Note - "am going to", not "have" - hence the answer to the question.) Despite claiming to be a confession and a change of heart, the letter ends with a repetition of her intent to do away with her female sibling - which just goes to show, I guess, that you can lead a leopard to water but you can't make it change its spots.

Ambrose Bierce's third story, "An imperfect conflagration", from his four-story collection "The Parenticide Club", opens with the famous line "Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time", which is an astonisingly direct literary descendant of Austen's sentence. I very much doubt if Bierce knew of Austen's Juvenilia, but I'm sure he would have enjoyed the pieces if he had known them!

Another author whose sense of humour chimes with Austen's is Poe. Yes, Edgar Allen. "You're nuts!" I hear you cry incredulously. Well, try his pair of stories "How to write a Blackwood article" and "A predicament". If they don't have you rolling in the aisles, you seriously need to lighten up. And there's more side-splitting humour from him, too.

Answer: The preparation and eating of food

In "Lesley Castle", Charlotte - not very sensitively and all too tardily - trumps a real tear-jerker of a letter from her friend Miss Margaret Lesley with a "greater" tear-jerker of her own about her sister Eloise's engagement to a young man who had a fatal accident virtually on the eve of their wedding. Charlotte's reaction is: "'Good God!' (said I) 'you don't say so? Why what in the name of Heaven will become of all the Victuals [I have spent these last days preparing]! We shall never be able to eat it while it is good."

This work seems a bit of an odd fish. It's partly funny, especially Charlotte's culinary references, but a lot of it seems serious. I can't quite make it out. Is it some kind of transition, I wonder, where Jane was trying out something more weighty and sophisticated. The storyline is a little more realistic than something like "Eric and Elfrida". I dunno. You decide.

Answer: False

I'm sure she would never dream of doing something so presumptuous. It's actually a self-contained satire of the currently fashionable romantic novel, filled with unlikely adventure and/or unrealistically good or evil characters. It takes the form of a plot summary for a prospective novel.

It was written about a year before her death, and reverts to her "juvenilia face" of farce and burlesque. James Stanier Clarke, the librarian of George, the Prince Regent, contacted Jane Austen with his master's "request" that she dedicate her next volume to him.

She realised that this was not the kind of request that you can turn down. The Prince Regent turned out to be very lucky indeed - he was the dedicatee of "Emma". But Clarke appears to have been, according to commentators, something of a Mr Collins, and he pompously suggested a couple of other novelistic projects to her, including the absurdly inappropriate one of "any historical romance, illustrative of the history of the august House of Cobourg" (to whose Prince Leopold the Prince Regent had coincidentally just appointed him chaplain and private English Secretary).

She managed to find a polite way of turning down his suggestions, although she might well have been seething at his stupidity.

Answer: She partly blames Elizabeth's ministers for her crimes

She despises Elizabeth, thinks scarcely any better of her father, and idolises Mary Queen of Scots, who she says was unjustly done to death. She also professes a partiality "to the Roman Catholic religion" - rather cheeky, given her Anglican clergyman father - and disposes of the charges against Charles Ist of "arbitrary and tyrannical government" "with one argument I am certain of satisfying every sensible & well disposed person whose opinions have been properly guided by a good Education--& this Argument is that he was a STUART." If you've ever read Sellar & Yeatman's "1066 and all that", a comic take on English history, you'll get something of the flavour of Jane Austen's work.

Answer: The Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in heaven....")

There's nothing tongue-in-cheek about the prayers, which are addressed in the plural ("Give US grace..."). They are evening prayers and deeply felt, if unremarkable and conventional. I can't spot any of the concerns of her novels in them, but maybe you can.

Answer: Lady Catherine de Bourgh

"Letter the third, from a young lady in distressed circumstances to her friend", from "A collection of letters", has often been taken by commentators to be a forestaste of Elizabeth Bennett's furious row with Lady Catherine in "Pride & Prejudice". Maria Williams merely replies to Lady Greville's arrogance with not-too-muted insolence, but she doesn't stop Lady Greville constantly ramming her social superiority down Maria's throat, and she's still fuming impotently at the end of her letter. Elizabeth, her more feisty literary descendent, thoroughly crushes Lady Catherine in their argument.

Answer: Her mother preferred to ride the family's only pony on the whole tour

Jane Austen seems to have started off with pure burlesques around 1787, when she was about 11 (11!) and graduated to longer, more integrated and sophisticated, psychologically realistic and perceptive proto-novels like "Catherine, or the bower" by 1793, when she was about 17. By that stage, I'm sure she would have been quite capable of "Lady Susan", although the dating of that work is imprecise in the extreme. You can thus trace her development through her juvenilia.

The three volumes of her juvenilia, while not strictly chronological, according to this reading do progress roughly in order of composition, with the first volume containing the earliest and shortest writings. Thus, the very brief "tour through Wales", which is just a short expansion of a single joke, would be a very early work.

Answer: We haven't got a clue what's going on

You can get the flavour of this short work in the opening line: "(Enter Corydon) But Hush! I am interrupted. (Exit Corydon)". It's a running gag; these form the basis of several of the pieces in the Juvenilia.

Answer: They are so generous that they give a complete stranger their daughter's hand in marriage with a dowry of £10,000, together with their entire house and contents

In the story "Evelyn" (which refers to a village), Mr Gower, who they have never seen before, asks for their house merely because he likes the look of it. They, overwhelmed by his politeness and restraint, give it to him on the spot. They are mortified by his generosity when he graciously allows them to stay in it half an hour longer.

Answer: She forgot that she was already engaged to be married when she accepted a subsequent proposal

The eponymous hero and heroine of the story "Frederic and Elfrida" erect this epitaph over her grave: "Here lies our friend who having promis-ed / That unto two she would be marri-ed / Threw her sweet Body & her lovely face / Into the Stream that runs thro' Portland Place." Kinda makes you weep, dunnit?

Answer: Rebecca

In the same story "Frederic and Elfrida", the two cousins befriend the two sisters named above, and are so enraptured by the "engaging qualities of [Rebecca's] mind" and her "sentiments so nobly expressed on the different excellencies of Indian & English Muslins, & the judicious preference [she gives] the former" that these qualities and sentiments "amply atone" for her "forbidding Squint, [her] greazy tresses & [her] swelling Back, which are more frightfull than imagination can paint or pen describe", and for "the Horror with which [her] first appearance must ever inspire the unwary visitor." Jezalinda, though quite attractive, is hardly ever heard from again.

Answer: The story is about Alice - Jack only rates a paragraph in the fourteen-page-long story

The single paragraph concerning Jack simply relates the facts that, being a drunkard, he "never did anything worth mentioning" and that he drank himself to death, leaving his considerable fortune to his sister Alice, in turn enabling her to marry her beloved Charles Adams - "& as the effect was Joyfull, the Cause could scarcely be lamented."

Answer: Because it reminds her of her beloved Augustus' blue satin waistcoat striped with white

Augustus is in Newgate prison and Sophia, rushing to visit him there, turned back at the last minute because her delicate sensibilities couldn't stand seeing him in those conditions. Since then, she cannot bear to hear him mentioned in any way, because the mere thought of his suffering, and the execution which he has probably already undergone, is intolerable to her.

Answer: Because his favourite hunting horse was ill

The unfinished "Catherine, or the bower" is definitely the most mature piece of juvenilia. In fact, it's arguably a step above "Lady Susan", in that the latter is still written in epistolatory (i.e. a series of letters) form, whereas "Catherine" is in Jane's mature narrative form. It's worth noting in this context that the first versions of "Sense & sensibility" and "Pride & prejudice" (called "Elinor and Marianne" and "First impressions" respectively) are agreed by many scholars also to have been epistolatory. "Catherine" is in fact very similar in many respects to Jane's first mature novel, Northanger Abbey, the least point of resemblance being the names of the heroines. Both are used to satirise the conventional portrayals of heroines; both are somewhat naive characters but have real taste and judgement, which they use to come to their own often perceptive conclusions about the people around them. These qualities are in both cases primarily exercised on "friends", a brother and sister, who Jane uses to point these qualities up. Catherine Percival has bubble-headed Camilla Stanley, while Catherine Morland has the equally superficial Isabella Thorpe. Neither heroine excercises her qualities flawlessly: both fall for the reprobate, overbearing, self-centered brothers. One of the major differences is that Catherine Percival, at least by the fairly advanced stage at which the novel breaks off, has no equivalent of Catherine Morland's Henry Tilney, that novel's "good guy". Perhaps it was this lack which led Jane to discontinue it.

Another interesting feature of the earlier novel is the presence of the bower itself. I don't think Jane Austen generally goes in much for symbolism, but the bower seems to be a pretty clear exception. It functions as a "remembrance of things past", of a time when all was right with the world. When Edward Stanley invades this bower he uses a show of affection for Catherine to perpetrate a crude and heartless prank on her aunt. Is it going too far to see this as a kind of symbolic rape? I'll leave that to your far wiser heads.

Answer: We don't know and neither does she, because she changes her mind every sentence

(From the epistolatory story "The three sisters".) One of the most dramatic examples of her indecisiveness is her statement that she would certainly marry him; her very next sentence is: "I have not settled whether I shall have him or not".

This is one of her somewhat more mature pieces of juvenilia, which can be dated to her sixteenth year, in which the characters and situations might be ridiculous and just as humorous as her earlier stuff, but they are believable, as opposed to being absurd. I reckon there's an element of tragedy underlying a story like this: such a waste of a life spent making such vital decisions for such frivolous reasons.

Answer: The Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia

In the "Plan of a novel", the clergyman hero and his heroine daughter are driven here by the (unspecified) vicissitudes of life. This is a satire on the outre situations and locations favoured by the romantic adventures fashionable at the time.

Answer: True

Several times other guests at the banquet offer him various dishes, but as he is apparently incapable of squeaking up for himself, Lady Hampton invariably replies on his behalf that he "never" eats or drinks that particular victual, for various nonsensical reasons.

Answer: They bit off two of her fingers

(In the story "Henry and Eliza", undated.) Eliza is a foundling, being discovered in a haycock by Sir George and Lady Harcourt. I won't spoil the ending for you, but trust me - it's worth it!

Answer: His own

This is one of her shortest pieces - three paragraphs, each one only a couple of sentences long. That's one of the things that characterises the work of a genius like her, even at age 15: her conciseness of expression. (I really can't explain the story any further without quoting it, it's that short. You'll have to read it for yourself.)

Answer: A fragment written to inculcate the praise of virtue

The poem to the memory of Mrs Lefroy is undeniably serious - but it's also undeniably not juvenlia: it was written in 1808, when Jane was 32. The "Fragment" was written on 2nd June 1793; the whimsical "Ode to Pity" was written the very next day. When she revised her juvenilia some time before 1810, she erased the "Fragment". Hmmmm.

Answer: He considered that the walk would be beneficial to her weak and uncertain state of health

From the epistolatory "Amelia Webster", which tells the complete story of the courtship and marriage of three couples in seven extremely short letters. This sort of brevity, especially brevity in letters, is typical of her earlier juvenilia - compare "The three sisters". That's not to say that she didn't write long letters in her earlier juvenilia - see "Love and Freindship"; it's just that her short, terse letters seem to go together with farcical, burlesque elements to mark them as being written when she was nearer twelve than seventeen.

Answer: 3 6

In "A Tale", from the collection "Scraps". The answer is true. Honest! How? Don't ask me. This is Jane at her wackiest. The Goons would be proud of her.

Answer: egg

From "The Memoirs of Mr Clifford", an unfinished tale. Quite a few of her early pieces are incomplete. Some of them undoubtedly should be finished, but with others I'm not so sure. This one, for instance: it concerns Mr Clifford's journey from London to Bath, each day of which covers a shorter distance. Somehow the humour in this story is heightened by it petering out at the stage at which he takes a whole day to travel maybe a mile or two. We can imagine a Monty Pythonesque denoument in which he disappears up his own dilatoriness.

The other story, also unfinished, in this pair dedicated to Jane's brother Charles, concerns Sir William Montague's amorous adventures. The unfinished ending gives the story the feel of the song that has no end. (The opening of the story gives Sir William's impressive pedigree, which is more than a little reminiscent of Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall fondly perusing the entry "ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL" in the Baronetage, in Jane Austen's last complete novel, "Persuasion".)

Answer: To make her fortune

"The beautiful Cassandra" is of course dedicated to her sister. It's a curious work: all of two pages in my Penguin edition of the Juvenilia, but in twelve chapters each of an average length of 1.583 sentences. The second sentence describes Cassandra's milliner father as being "of noble birth, being the near relation of the Duchess of ---'s butler."

If you've scored 100% on this quiz, congratulations. If you've scored 0%, and just wanted a taster of her juvenilia, I hope I've persuaded you that it's worth reading. It takes some assembling, because you won't find it all in one place. The website in the introduction is the closest, but misses some bits out and doesn't have the prayers. You can find these at http://www.mirror.org/ken.roberts/austen.prayer1.html (use the links at the bottom to get to the other two prayers). Penguin's "Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte" is out of print, but easily obtainable second-hand, at least in the UK. It has nothing like all the juvenilia, but is the most complete easily obtainable print collection. The editor is in my view completely unjustified in not including "Lesley Castle" and "Evelyn" on the ground that they are "dull". Once you've got it all together, it should take you an afternoon to read it - it's not massive, and it's ideal for reading in small chunks. So if you haven't already, go to it!