Austen, Jane.

12mo (177 x 105mm.), 3 volumes, first edition, the Austen editor R.W. Chapman's copy with 30 pencilled corrections or queries in the margins, bound without the half-titles or final blanks, contemporary half calf, marbled boards, spines gilt, ink inscription "T. Blyth's" [? circulating library] in each volume, preserved in brown cloth folding box, slightly foxed, small hole in E6 of volume 3 (repaired), boards rubbed, joints partially cracked

R.W. Chapman, book-label and pencil ownership signature ("..Oxford, Dec. 1919...") in volume 1

The literary scholar Robert William Chapman (1881-1960) was secretary to the delegates of the Clarendon Press. The English authors he admired and studied most were Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson, and his scholarly reputation rests on his editions of their works. As early as 1912 he was planning a new edition of Austen's novels, and this was completed, with the assistance of Katharine Marion Metcalfe, in five volumes in 1923. The present copy of "Sense and Sensibility", which Chapman acquired in 1919, was evidently annotated with typical care and attention to detail as part of his editorial work on Austen leading to his "judiciously annotated [1925 edition]" (L.F. Powell, rev. M. Clare Loughlin-Chow, Oxford DNB). Chapman's transcription of the novelist's unfinished novel The Watsons appeared in 1927: see next lot, which includes an autograph note by Chapman. He later produced numerous further editions of Austen's works, including juvenilia, minor works and two editions of letters. His Critical Bibliography of Jane Austen appeared in 1953.

Gilson A1; Keynes 1; Sadleir 62a

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First edition of Jane Austen's first published novel, with a distinguished modern provenance (see below)