Description

“MUCH THE RAREST OF THE NOVELS”: FIRST EDITION OF AUSTEN’S FIRST NOVEL, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, 1811, BEAUTIFULLY BOUND

AUSTEN, Jane. Sense and Sensibility: A Novel. In Three Volumes. By a Lady. London: T. Egerton, 1811. Three volumes. 12mo, late 19th-century full tan speckled calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, red and tan morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

First edition of Jane Austen’s extraordinarily rare first novel, beautifully bound by Bumpus.

“The size of the edition has not been recorded. It was undoubtedly a small one? Probably it consisted of only 1000 copies or even less? and this would account for the fact that Sense and Sensibility is so much the rarest of the novels at the present day” (Keynes 1). Sense and Sensibility was Austen’s first published novel—Austen had sold Susan (the first version of Northanger Abbey) first, to the publishers Richard Crosby & Son, but they failed to publish it. Sense and Sensibility “does brightly respond to an interesting religious and ethical debate over the philosophy of sentiment? [The popular view held that morality] depends on the ‘heart’ and not on the ‘head? Rational moralists opposed the tendency, and a debate was in full swing by the 1790s when novel after novel took up the twin themes of prudence and benevolence, reason and passion, head and heart, or sense and sensibility” (Honan, Jane Austen, 275-77). Bound without half titles, as often. Gilson A1. Keynes 1.

Occasional foxing, text generally clean. Beautiful calf-gilt bindings fine. Rare.