Pride and Prejudice. by AUSTEN, Jane - 1817: A Novel. In Two Volumes. By the Author of "Sense and Sensibility," &c. Third Edition.

London: printed for T. Egerton,, 1817. 2 volumes, duodecimo (176 x 102 mm). Contemporary calf, rebacked, twin red and green calf labels, marbled sides, endpapers and edges. With the bookplates of Henry Edward Chetwynd-Stapylton (1822-1900) and ownership signature to verso of front free endpapers of Ellen Venables, dated 1852. Bound without half-titles though with terminal blank in vol. I. Sides rubbed with a couple of patches of wear, corners worn, some foxing to contents. A very good copy. Third edition, and the first to be issued in two volumes. Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1813, was Austen's second published novel following Sense and Sensibility in 1811. Austen began it in August 1796, when she was the same age as her heroine, and finished in August 1797. Entitled "First Impressions", it was offered by her father to Thomas Cadell on 1 November 1797 as a novel in three volumes "about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina". Cadell declined without asking to see the manuscript. Austen revised it in 1809-10 after the success of Sense and Sensibility, by which time the first choice of title had been used elsewhere. It remains the most popular of her novels.