FIRST COLLECTED AND FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN, 1833

AUSTEN, Jane. Novels. London: Richard Bentley, 1833. Five volumes. Small octavo, contemporary marbled boards rebacked and recornered in later calf-gilt. $38,000.

Important first collected and first illustrated British edition of the novels of Jane Austen, "mother of the English 19th-century novel" (Kunitz & Haycraft), printed from the plates of Bentley's "Standard Novel" separate editions of 1833, each volume with engraved frontispiece illustration and vignette title page, in contemporary marbled boards. "Very rare in any state" (Gilson).

"The fact that [Austen] wrote comparatively little and that that little is almost always of the highest quality has resulted in the unique distinction which her reputation now enjoys, that she is the only author of her period whose works can be read, and are read, today with delight in their entirety" (Baugh, et al., 1206). Bentley's first collected edition of Austen's novels includes Sense and Sensibility (originally published 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1815), Mansfield Park (1814) and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both published posthumously in 1818). "The unconscious charm of the domestic atmosphere of the stories, and the delicate subsatirical humor which pervades them, have won her the admiration, even to fanaticism, of innumerable readers" (DNB). After 1818, the novels went out of print until Bentley purchased the rights to all six books; when this edition first appeared, with its memoir of the author by Henry Austen, it triggered an interest in Jane Austen's works which has never flagged since. Frontispieces and vignettes engraved by William Greatbatch after Ferdinand Pickering. Bound without half titles; Mansfield Park bound with publisher's final advertisements. Gilson D6. Keynes 27. Sadleir 3735a. Early inked owner name in each volume.

Books in very good condition with scattered foxing including to frontispieces and engraved titles, inner paper hinges partially split but holding; bindings lightly rubbed with faint splash marks to spines. A handsome set of the rare first collected edition.