Sense and Sensibility
Price: $2,250.00
Will Greatbatch after Pickering. Hard Cover. London: Richard Bentley, 1846. Very Good.
Illustrated with a frontispiece and title page vignette, engraved by Will Greatbatch after Pickering. Reprint of Richard Bentley edition, first published in 1833. In Sadleir's No. 4 style binding, used between 1840 and 1848. Publisher's dark brown morocco grain cloth, with blind-stamped scroll ornament and Greek key border to boards, spine compartments divided by quadruple blind rules, gilt titles to spine, and pale yellow endpapers. Very good, with some sunning to spine, light wear to spine ends and a small scratch to cloth near foot of spine, bump to lower corner of front board, binding slightly cocked and shaken, Jane Austen scholar Chris Viveash and Macknight Crawford's bookplates to front endpapers, Robert Seton bookseller ticket to front pastedown, and some spotting to frontispiece and vignette title page. Overall, a pleasing copy. Gilson D7. In Sense and Sensibility, two sisters - Elinor and Marianne - become impoverished after their father passes away. The two sisters are characterized by opposing traits, Elinor by common sense and Marianne by passion, but become involved in romantic situations that bring them closer to the other's worldview. Austen published Sense and Sensibility in 1811, though she began working on the novel in 1795 when she was just 19 years old. It was her first published novel, and she took considerable financial risk in publishing it on a commission basis. The book has received multiple film adaptations, the most successful of which was in 1995, directed by Ang Lee and starring Emma Thompson as Elinor (Emma also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay!) and Kate Winslet as Marianne. Jane Austen (1775-1817) is well-known for the social criticism she weaves into her novels, using irony and realism to highlight gender roles in marriage and society. The novels that Austen published within her lifetime referred to her, the author, anonymously, her only identifier being her gender and the other books she had written. It was only upon the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion that a biographical note written by her brother identified Austen as the author of her first four novels, which have since earned their place as cornerstones of British literature. According to Gilson, "No English reissue of [Jane Austen's] novels is known after 1818 until in 1832 Richard Bentley decided to include them in his series of Standard Novels" (p. 211). Bentley's single-volume Standard Novels editions of Austen's books were instrumental in renewing public interest in her work, which had fallen into near-obscurity after her death. According to the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) website, Chris Viveash is a longtime member of the society who has published "thirty-five articles on the works and life of Jane Austen." Item #JA040
