8vo. [3], vi-xv, [1], 331pp, [1]. Without half-title. With an engraved frontispiece.

[Uniformly bound with:] AUSTEN, Janes. Emma: a novel. London. Richard Bentley, 1849. 8vo. [2], 435pp, [1]. Without half-title. with an engraved frontispiece.

[And:] AUSTEN, Jane. Mansfield park: a novel. London. Richard Bentley, 1847. 8vo. [2], 424pp. Without half-title, with an engraved frontispiece.

[And:] AUSTEN, Jane. Northanger abbey. A novel; Persuasion. London. Richard Bentley, 1848. 8vo. [2], 440pp. Without half-title, with an engraved frontispiece. Persuasion has separate dated title page; pagination and register continuous.

[And:] AUSTEN, Janes. Pride and prejudice. A novel. London. Richard Bentley, 1846. 8vo. [2], 340pp. Without half-title, with an engraved frontispiece.

Uniformly bound by Charles White of London (stamp-signed to FFEPs, dated 1850) in contemporary richly gilt-tooled green crushed morocco, A.E.G., marbled endpapers, gilt dentelles. A trifle rubbed, spines and boards of fifth volume unevenly sunned. Internally clean and crisp.

A rather unusual survival - in fine dated contemporary morocco bindings by Charles White of Pall Mall - of all Jane Austen's six novels, in five volumes, as usual. After 1818, no reissues of her works appeared in Britain until 1833 when English publisher Richard Bentley (1794-1871), whose Standard Novels series - which first appeared in 1831 - popularized the single-volume format for English novels, had secured the copyright to her works.

Because Bentley retained the copyrights of Sense and Sensibility until 1839, Pride and Prejudice until 1841, Mansfield Park until 1842, Emma until 1857, and Northanger Abbey & Persuasion until 1860, the only way for early Victorian readers to secure a complete set of her novels in uniform edition were to buy the Bentley editions. The publisher was unsurprisingly keen to capitalise on this, and issued collected editions of her complete novels 'from the plates of the Standard Novels edition', with half titles reading 'Miss Austen's Novels', and a volume number, and without any reference to the Standard Novels on the title pages. As the half-titles in this set have been discarded, the absence of any reference to the latter would suggest that set was likely issued as such, rather than compiled from single volumes.