"HER GREATEST NOVEL": JANE AUSTEN'S EMMA, THE FIRST FULLY ILLUSTRATED EDITION

AUSTEN, Jane. Emma. London: Macmillan, 1896. Small octavo, modern full light blue morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, patterned endpapers, all edges gilt. $4500.

The first fully illustrated edition of Austen's exquisitely comedic and unerringly insightful social satire—"artistry… as elaborate as any novelist has ever achieved," with illustrations throughout by Hugh Thompson, very attractively bound.

"Emma was the fourth and last novel which Jane Austen published in her lifetime. When it was written the author was at the height of her powers, and she wrote the book rapidly and surely, encouraged by the success of her previous novels to express herself with confidence in the way peculiarly her own" (Rosenbach 29:24). "Jane Austen's fourth novel has a profundity similar to that of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, only more elusive since Emma's character is far more subtle than Elizabeth or Marianne's… Austen's self-knowledge, her love of detail… [helped her] to create a proud, self-willed, self-guided, vexing and outrageous Emma and her greatest novel" (Honan, Jane Austen, 356-364). First published in 1816. The illustrator of this lovely edition—the first fully illustrated edition—Hugh Thomson, "takes first place… among the genteel book illustrators" (Harthan, 238). "His style reflected the nostalgia of the time, his fine line drawings of rural characters and gentle countrified society appealed to the imagination of the public" (Olivia Fitzpatrick). He had a knack for "period costumes, coaches and horses, and elegant furniture; and his brisk style give his work irresistible charm" (Hodnett, 218). With 56-page publisher's catalogue at rear. Gilson E86.

Fine condition.