Beschreibung:

Property from an Important American Collection
Austen, JaneNorthanger Abbey: and Persuasion. London: John Murray, [1817]
4 volumes, 12mo (190 x 110 mm). Half-titles (in all but volume II), final blanks; as noted, half-title lacking in volume II, light and scattered foxing, restoration to inner margins of final blanks. Original paper-backed boards; spines skillfully rebacked, some staining and rubbing to extremities, as usual. Half-morocco slipcases and folding chemises.
The first editions, published posthumously, of Austen's last works — the Newton-Cohn copy.
“But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” — Persuasion
Northanger Abbey was originally titled Susan when Austen drafted the novel fifteen years earlier. The first novel that Austen finished, the manuscript for Susan was sold to the bookseller Crosby & Co in 1803. In Spring 1816, after having been retained by the bookseller for 13 years, it was sold back to Austen's brother Henry. Following Austen's death, Henry gave the novel its final title and arranged for its publication, along with Persuasion, in a four-volume set in December 1817 (though the title page gives the date 1818). 
Persuasion was the final novel written by Austen. In a letter to her niece Fanny Knight in March 1817, Austen wrote that she had a novel "which may appear about a twelvemonth hence." Following Austen's death in July, her brother Henry named the novel Persuasion and published it alongside Northanger Abbey. Most significantly, Henry supplied a "Biographical Notice" in which Austen's identity as the author is finally revealed. 
In the intervening centuries, these posthumous works—and Persuasion in particular—have been the source of much critical attention. Two manuscript chapters of Persuasion hold the position of being the only surviving holograph pages of a novel that Austen completed and intended for publication. As Kathryn Sutherland notes, these chapters "appear to form a conspectus of Austen's texts in the making, allowing on a modest scale the kind of survey of the stages of literary creation, available to textual critics of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Romantic writers" (152). Here, Sutherland makes a direct and bold parallel with Austen's contemporaries, the giants of the Romantic movement. Of Austen's six published novels, Persuasion aligns most closely with this genre; it also arguably offers the author's most mature prose. Having the ability, for the first any only time, to see through these holograph chapters Austen's creative process and the intimacy of her prose.
A charming copy of Austen's posthumously published works.
REFERENCES:Gilson A9; Sutherland, Kathryn. Jane Austen's textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
PROVENANCE:A. Edward Newton (bookplates to front pastedowns; his sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 16-18 April 1941, lot 46) — Saul Cohn (his sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 26-27 April 1955, lot 33) — Jeffery Young (his sale, Sotheby's London 14 December 1992, lot 8)