…than a “new to me” edition of Jane Austen’s novels. Sure it’s not a diamond in the rough find, or rare at all. It’s part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series which publishes the collective works of such Authors as Dickens, Poe, Shakespeare, Wilde and others. But this mass produced gem is leather and has embossing. So yes, it’s pretty and shiny and I couldn’t resist.
The volume is entitled Jane Austen: Seven Novels, and it includes the six major novels Austen wrote; Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abey and a bonus short novel. Designed by renown book illustrator Elizabeth Traynor, and includes an elaborately designed cover embossed in gold and pastel foils of garden flowers and Regency inspired motiffs. All the page edges are tipped in gold, and the endpapers are a coordinating floral motiff.
If you haven’t, run to Barnes and Noble and get yours before they are gone! I was not able to find it online anywhere.
And if you want something extra to drool over, try the beautifully illustrated new edition Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury.
The Sunday Salon: Surprisingly, this volume is not just a fluffy image gallery packed with pretty pictures. Rebecca Dickson is an Austen scholar and instructor of writing and literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder with a doctorate in English Literature with a specialty in eighteenth-century writers. A professed Austen enthusiast since reading Pride and Prejudice in High School, Dickson has written an inspiring tribute to her favorite author geared to the everyman reader. Her style is open and engaging and I never once felt the scholarly mantle descend to befuddle the text. The opening introduction and short biography are followed by six chapters devoted to each of Jane Austen’s major novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Within each novel chapter, Dickson not only discusses the novel’s plot, characters, highlights and impact on classic literature, but places it in context to Jane Austen’s life and her times.
Images – Amazon
