SENSE AND SENSIBILITY: A NOVEL IN THREE VOLUMES
London: T.[homas] Egerton, 1813. Second Edition. Octavos, 306 pp (Vol. 1); 278 pp (Vol. 2); 294 pp (Vol. 3). VG; beautifully and skillfully rebound in marbled paper with 3/4 calf, tooled and gilt decorations and titles to spines, marbled endpapers, covers and spine edges very clean with only slight bumping to corners; bindings tight; text blocks very clean with gilt top edges; foxing to pages throughout; all half-titles present. A lovingly maintained set.
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NOTES
Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817. She learned to read and write early, and had full access to her clergyman father's library, probably reading many of the same works he taught to the neighborhood boys he tutored. With her sister, Cassandra, she was sent to a school in Oxford for further education, where she nearly died from typhus. She wrote short novellas, satirical epistolary exchanges, and dramatics to perform with her seven siblings. None of the editions of the four novels published during her lifetime (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma) bear her name. The memoir of her life written by her brother and published posthumously with Northanger Abbey and Persuasion identified her as the author of all six novels.
Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen's first published novel. The first edition came out in October 1811, indicating on the title page only that it was "By a Lady." This second edition was published following the success of Pride and Prejudice which had come out in January of 1813, hence the attribution. Austen made several revisions and edits to the manuscript in preparation for this second edition.