"MONEY CAN ONLY GIVE HAPPINESS WHERE THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO GIVE IT": FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF AUSTEN'S FIRST NOVEL, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, 1833

AUSTEN, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. London: Richard Bentley, 1833. 12mo, contemporary three-quarter tan calf gilt, raised bands, red and blue morocco spine labels, marbled boards. $14,000.

Third edition, the first to identify Austen as the author and the first illustrated edition of Jane Austen's extraordinarily rare first novel, on "the twin themes of prudence and benevolence, reason and passion, head and heart, or sense and sensibility," with engraved frontispiece and vignette title page.

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). "The size of the [first] 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). The second edition, with the text significantly revised by Austen and the substitution of "By the author of Pride and Prejudice" for "By a Lady" on the title page, appeared in October 1813. "No English reissue of Austen's novels is known after 1818 until in 1832 Richard Bentley decided to include them in his series of Standard Novels… Bentley's reprinting of the novels, each complete in one volume, was presumably intended for the private buyer; there is evidence that some circulating libraries were still well supplied with copies of the original editions" (Gilson, 211). With series title page noting that this is No. XXIII in Bentley's Standard Novels series. Gilson D1. Early ink notation to last leaf of text.

Infrequent faint foxing and soiling to text, rear inner paper hinge split; contemporary calf binding with a bit of expert restoration. A handsome copy.