From the age of eleven until she was eighteen, Jane Austen wrote her tales in three notebooks. The notebooks still exist - one in the Bodleian Library; the other two in the British Museum. They include among others Love and Freindship, written when Jane was fourteen. These are notebooks from Jane Austen's childhood and despite their rough nature, they offer something of value: not just the insight they give us into Austen's thinking and her mind, but there is a certain charm here, a thing to value in its own. . . .