Lot 178
Austen, Jane
Emma
Auction: 16 June 2026 from 10:00 BST
Description
A Novel. London: Richard Bentley, 1833. 8vo (17.3 x 10.6cm), [2] 435 pp., original maroon cloth, rebacked retaining most of spine and part of series-label, title-label renewed, series-title, engraved frontispiece and additional vignette title-page by Greatbatch after Pickering, letterpress title-page, all dated 1833, engraved bookplate [Gilson D2; Keynes 123; Sadleir 3734a.25]
Footnote
First Bentley edition, the first edition in one volume, and the first to be illustrated. Bentley's editions of Austen, published as part of his 'Standard Novels' series in 1832-3 (and later in 1833 re-issued as a collected edition), were of great importance in introducing Austen to a wider audience following their original appearance in the 1810s. There were intervening editions in French and German, and American editions, but ‘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' (Gilson, p. 211).
