Austen, Jane

Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion; By the Author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," &c. With a Biographical Notice of the Author. In Four Volumes. London: John Murray. Vols. I and II printed by C. Roworth Bull-yard; Vols. III and IV by T. Davison, Lombard Street, Whitefriars, [December 1817] 1818

4 vols., 12mo (171 x 101 mm). Vol. IV with two rear blanks present; lacking half-titles, vol. I lacking advertisement, previous owner's pencil inscription on initial blank pages. Full tan calf, boards gilt-r𒁏uled, spines with raised bands in six compartments, title and author gilt-lettered in second and thirds compartments, others ornately gilt, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, brown silk place-marker ribꦑbon; rebacked preserving original spines.

The first editions, published posthumously, of Austen's last works.

“But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” — Persuasion

Northanger Abbey was originally titled Susan when Austen drafted the novel fifteen years earlier. The first novel that Austen finished, the manuscript for Susan was sold to the bookseller Crosby & Co in 1803. In Spring 1816, after having been retained by the bookseller for 13 years, it was sold back to Austen's brother Henry. Following Austen's death, Henry gave the novel its final title and arranged for its publication, along with Persuasion𒅌, in a four-volume set in December 1817 (though the title page gives the date 1818).&😼nbsp;

Persuasion was the final novel written by Austen. In a letter to her niece Fanny Knight in March 1817, Austen wrote that she had a novel "which may appear about a twelvemonth hence." Following Austen's death in July, her brother Henry named the novel Persuasion and published it alongside Northanger Abbey. Most significantly, 𝔍Henry supplied a "Biographical Notice" in whic♛h Austen's identity as the author is finally revealed. 

In the intervening centuries, these posthumous works—and Persuasion in particular—have been the source of much critical attention. Two manuscript chapters of Persuasion hold the position of being the only surviving holograph pages of a novel that Austen completed and intended for publication. As Kathryn Sutherland notes, these chapters "appear to form a conspectus of Austen's texts in the making, allowing on a modest scale the kind of survey of the stages of literary creation, available to textual critics of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Romantic writers" (152). Here, Sutherland makes a direct and bold parallel with Austen's contemporaries, the giants of the Romantic movement. Of Austen's six published novels, Persuasion aligns most closely with this genre; it also arguably offers the author's most mature prose. Having the ability, for the first any only time, to see through these holograph chapters Austen's creative process and the intimacy of her ♋prose.

A charming copy of Austen's posthumously published works.

REFERENCES:

Gilson A9; Sutherland, Kathryn. Jane Austen's textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxfordꩵ: Oxford University Press, 2005