Sold for $81,900

3 volumes. Half-titles in each volume, final blank in vol. II only; paper watermarked "IS 1810" and "1808". (Some light spotting to a few leaves, M11 in Vol. II with paper flaw touching letters, a few minor marginal tears from rough opening or paper flaws.)  20th-century red straight-grained morocco gilt, turn-ins with gilt thistle roll-tooling, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, stamp-signed by C. J. Sawyer (a few tiny surface scuffs). 

FIRST EDITION OF JANE AUSTEN'S FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEL, one of only 1,000 or fewer copies printed. Austen originally structured her work as an epistolary novel entitled Elinor and Marianne, but revised the work in 1797 and 1798 at Steventon, and again in 1809 and 1810 during her first year of residence at Chawton. Thomas Egerton agreed to publish the novel on a commission basis, and Jane Austen "actually made a reserve from her very moderate income to meet the expected loss." The price of the new novel was 15 shillings in boards, with advertisements first appearing on 30 October 1811. Keynes suggests that the edition was "only 1000 copies or even less." When it sold out in less than two years, Jane wrote to her brother Francis: "You will be glad to hear that every copy of Sense and Sensibility is sold and that it has brought me £140 beside the copyright, if that should ever be of any value." Gilson A1; Keynes 1; Sadleir 62b.