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Secondary sourceBook1923

Title Page of The Novels of Jane Austen (1923 edition)

R. W. Chapman · 1923

The title page of the first scholarly edition of Jane Austen's novels, edited by R. W. Chapman.

A scholarly edition of Austen's novels, showing her later recognition as a major literary figure.

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Title page of 'The Novels of Jane Austen', text based on collation of early editions by R. W. Chapman, with notes, indexes and illustrations from contemporary sources, in five volumes, Volume I. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1923. Handwritten library markings appear at the right edge.
R. W. Chapman (ed.), The Novels of Jane Austen, title page, 1923.

About this source

What it is

This is the title page of the first volume of 'The Novels of Jane Austen', edited by R. W. Chapman and published by Oxford at the Clarendon Press in 1923. It is the first scholarly edition of any English novelist's work.

Why it matters

This edition marked a turning point in how Austen's novels were studied, treating her work with the same careful textual scholarship usually reserved for classical authors. It shows how seriously her writing came to be taken by scholars over a century after her death.

Look closer

  • What does it mean for an edition to be based on 'collation of early editions'?
  • Why might Austen have been the first English novelist to receive this kind of scholarly treatment?
  • What handwritten marks appear on the page, and what might they tell us about the book's history?

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