Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion.

London: John Murray. 1818.

First editions of Jane Austen's fifth and sixth novels. Four volumes. 12mo. With the half-title in volume I but missing in the others and without the final two blanks in volume IV (as usual). Title pages of volumes II and IV have been mistakenly swapped into the wrong volumes when the book was originally bound and so the volume numbers on the two title-pages were altered accordingly in an early hand. Title page of the first volume has a contemporary ownership inscription. Some foxing and browning and black crayon marks in the lower margins of two leaves in volume III. Attractively rebound by the celebrated binder Trevor Lloyd in half calf and marbled paper covered boards. Spines decorated in gilt with red morocco labels lettered in gilt. A very good copy, smartly bound.
The novels were published a year after Austen's death by her brother Henry who wrote the "biographical notice". Northanger Abbey was the first of Austen's novels to be written but the last to be published. It is a deceptively assured and subtle work borrowing, developing and then subverting the conventions of the mock-exoticism and numinousness of the Gothic(k) novel.