“Jane Austen’s earliest writings appear to have little in common with the restrained and realistic society portrayed in her adult novels,” writes Kathryn Sutherland, a professor of English at the University of Oxford. “By contrast, they are exuberantly expressionistic tales of sexual misdemeanour, of female drunkenness and violence.”

A different side to the British novelist can be seen in the three notebooks of her early writings that still survive. Thought to have been written when Austen was between the ages of 11 and 17, they contain stories, dramatic sketches and a spoof history. For the first time in 40 years, they’ve been brought together for a display at the British Library. They reveal a precocious talent – copying the format of 18th-Century novels, with ‘Volume the First’, ‘Volume the Second’ and ‘Volume the Third’ inscribed on their front covers.

“Right through her juvenile writing, she’s already quite assured in her style – she can imitate the kind of writings that she would have read as a child,” Sandra Tuppen, a curator at the British Library, tells BBC Culture. “It’s very satirical. She’s quite assured in taking off the style – and you find that right through the teenage notebooks.”

As well as a table of contents and dedications written in the style of fawning odes to patrons, the first volume lists 12 chapters. “She says it’s a novel in 12 chapters – but each chapter is just a sentence or two, so she’s taking off the style of the novel without writing a serious novel herself at this stage. It’s intentional,” Tuppen says.

Funny girl

While the writings take the form of short works, they reveal the humour that lights up Austen’s novels. “They’re so lively; the stories are so witty,” says Tuppen. “They’re not what one would expect from an average teenage girl, especially not an 18th-Century teenage girl living in the seclusion that one might imagine of her family.”