In Her Own Hand series boxed set Hardcover by Jane Austen

Product Details

• Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group (2014-11-11)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 784 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780789212108
• Item Weight: 2069.55 grams
• Dimensions: 23.01 x 18.16 x 7.16 cm

For the first time, all three volumes of Jane Austen’s brilliant early manuscripts are available in beautiful facsimile editions.

Forever immortalized as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen actually produced her first “books” as a teenager. Taking their names from the inscriptions on their covers—Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third—these brilliant little collections include the stories, playlets, verses, and moral fragments she wrote likely from the ages of twelve to eighteen.

As a young author, Jane Austen delighted in language, employing it with great humor and surprising skill. She was adept at parodying the popular stories of her day and entertained her readers with outrageous plot lines and characters. Kathryn Sutherland, in her introductions, places Austen’s earliest works in context and explains how she mimicked even the style and manner in which this contemporary popular fiction was presented and arranged on the page.

None of her six famous novels survives in complete manuscript form. This is a unique opportunity to own likenesses of Jane Austen’s notebooks as originally written—in her own hand.

The In Her Own Hand series boxed set contains facsimile editions of Jane Austen’s fiction, in her handwriting. The books include transcriptions by R. W. Chapman first recorded in 1953.

In Her Own Hand boxed set of all three volumes includes:

Volume the First

Volume the Second 

Volume the Third 

About the Author

Though the domain of Jane Austen’s novels was as circumscribed as her life, her caustic wit and keen observation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family’s entertainment. As a clergyman’s daughter from a well-connected family, she had ample opportunity to study the habits of the middle class, the gentry, and the aristocracy. At 21, she began a novel called “The First Impressions,” an early version of Pride and Prejudice. In 1801, on her father’s retirement, the family moved to the fashionable resort of Bath. Two years later she sold the first version of Northanger Abby to a London publisher, but the first of her novels to appear in print was Sense and Sensibility, published at her own expense in 1811. It was followed by Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815).After her father died in 1805, the family first moved to Southampton then to Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Despite this relative retirement, Jane Austen was still in touch with a wider world, mainly through her brothers; one had become a very rich country gentleman, another a London banker, and two were naval officers. Though her many novels were published anonymously, she had many early and devoted readers, among them the Prince Regent and Sir Walter Scott. In 1816, in declining health, Austen wrote Persuasion and revised Northanger Abby. Her last work, Sandition, was left unfinished at her death on July 18, 1817. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Austen’s identity as an author was announced to the world posthumously by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abby and Persuasion in 1818.