'the first really independent issue of the novels'. A sweet, illustrated set of Jane Austen's six published novels, comprising Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, in the original publisher's pale green and gilt cloth.

Each novel with a short prefatory essay and bibliographical note, with a general life of the author by the editor Reginald Brimley Johnson. 'This was the first really independent issue of the novels— Bentley's edition having previously held the field. Mr Johnson, as a rule, followed the text of the latest edition which appeared in the author's lifetime' (Gilson). The text of this issue was used in Dent's edition of 1898, and a year later in the Temple edition of 1899.

With notable provenance for Mary Annabel Lacaita (1852-1924), daughter of the poet Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 2nd baronet, in 1885 she married the Anglo-Italian botanist and Liberal MP Charles Lacaita (1853-1933).

First Brimley Johnson edition; 10 vols; 8vo (18 x 12 cm); titles in red and sepia within architectural frames, illustrated with photographic plates after William Cubit Cooke, ornamental 'Ex Libris' endpapers, bookplate to front free endpaper recto; publisher's plale green cloth, gilt cartouche to upper covers, spine lettered in gilt, top-edge gilt, others uncut, slightly browned, minor offsetting to endpapers and title, the odd blemish, slight shelfware, shelfmark pasted to spine head of Mansfield vol. II, very good.

Gilson E75.