The Complete Novels of Jane Austen - (Chartwell Deluxe Editions) (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Celebrate the timeless wit and romance of Jane Austen with this beautifully bound deluxe edition, featuring all seven beloved novels in one elegant collector's volume.

Jane Austen revolutionized the literary romance, using it as a platform from which to address issues of gender politics and class consciousness among the British middle class of the late eighteenth century. Bound in a heat-stamped, vegan leather cover with foil accents, this collection includes all of Austen's unabridged novels and novellas:

• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice
• Mansfield Park
• Emma
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Lady Susan

With witty, unflinching morality, Austen portrays English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close and the nineteenth century began. Austen's heroines find happiness in many forms; each of the novels is a story of love and marriage--marriage for love, financial security, and for social status.

In a publishing career that spanned less than ten years, her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime. It wasn't until the 1940s that she became widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a fan culture. Austen's works continue to influence the course of the novel even as they charm readers today.

Savor and cherish the novels of Jane Austen in this display-worthy keepsake volume.

Essential volumes for the shelves of every classic literature lover, these deluxe classics editions include beautifully presented works from some of the most important authors in literary history. Other Chartwell Deluxe Editions include: Little Women, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Anne of Green Gables, The Inferno, Dracula, The Republic, The Iliad, Meditations, and Irish Fairy and Folk Tales.

About the Author

Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire. She was the seventh child of the local rector, and her life, by modern standards, was uneventful. In 1801, she moved with her parents to Bath but returned to Hampshire when her father died, settling in the village of Chawton. She remained there until 1817, when she moved to Winchester to be within easy reach of her doctor. She died that year, at age forty-one, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral, which also contains a plaque in honor of her memory. Four of her novels were published anonymously in her lifetime; two more, one of which was Persuasion, appeared posthumously.