Sense and Sensibility. by AUSTEN, Jane - 1833 [but 1832]

London: Richard Bentley,, 1833 [but 1832]. Octavo (160 x 102 mm). Contemporary green quarter calf, marbled paper boards, titles to spine in gilt, raised bands tooled in gilt, compartments blocked in blind, edges speckled red. Engraved vignette title and frontispiece by William Greatbach after Ferdinand Pickering (tissue-guards intact). Bookticket of chemist J. K. Higgins over ownership inscription to front pastedown. With the bookplate of actress Hilda Moore to the front free endpaper. Spine toned, wear to extremities, a couple of scuffs to leather, rubbing to sides, light foxing to contents; a very good copy. First Bentley edition in an uncommon contemporary binding. This is the third edition overall (pre-dating the first American by a few months), and the first English edition to be illustrated. In 1832-3 Richard Bentley bought the copyright to all Austen's novels, which had not been reissued since 1818, to include them in his Standard Novels series, of which this is no. XXIII. The Bentley illustrations, by the obscure Ferdinand Pickering, played an integral part in the reception of Austen's novels; according to one Austen scholar, they "promoted a sense that her novels were best understood as familial, female focused, and sensational. For decades, these illustrations would have served to steer readers away from the conclusion that Austen's fiction ought to be understood as social, comic, or didactic" (Davoney Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 2017, p. 20).