The Edgeworth-Butler copy.

The present copy of Emma—arguably the author's finest work, and one of the most accomplished examples of the realist novel—was personally sent by Jane Austen to her fellow novelist, Maria Edgeworth.

Emma—of which no part of the manuscript survives—was published on 23 December 1815. Publisher John Murray's ledger records twelve author's presentation copies sent to various recipients (chiefly chosen by Jane Austen in her letter to him of 11 December) just before Christmas. These include:

The Austen and Edgeworth families were acquainted through Jane's aunt and uncle, the Leigh Perrots, who for a while were neighbors of Richard Edgeworth. Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) is now regarded as the creator of the first true historical novel in English, paving the way for Sir Walter Scott and others, and celebrated for making significant contributions to the development of the novel in Europe. Belinda (1801), Edgeworth's second novel, was considered controversial in its day for its depiction of interracial marriage, and is directly referenced by Austen in Northanger Abbey:

Jane Austen was clearly an admirer of Edgeworth’s, writing to her niece, Anna Austen, on 28 September 1814:

The admiration, however, was not mutual. In the t.mes s Literary Supplement of 29 February 1968, and subsequently in Maria Edgeworth: a literary biography (Clarendon Press, 1972) Professor Marilyn Butler published a letter by Maria to her half-brother Charles Sneyd Edgeworth, commenting on her reading of the present copy of Emma:

At the t.mes , Edgeworth was far better-known than Austen. Kathryn Sutherland notes that Edgeworth was given £300 for Belinda, £1,050 for the second series of Tales of Fashionable Life (1812), and £2,100 for Patronage (1814). As a point of comparison, “[w]ith Cassandra Austen's sale for £210 of the five remaining copyrights to Richard Bentley in 1832… the overall earnings from her novels can be estimated at around £1,625, most of which was received after her death… In context, we can see that Austen received in her lifet.mes considerable literary if only modest financial success” (Sutherland 221). Only the copyright of Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s most commercially successful novel, was sold during her lifet.mes .

While Edgeworth was unmoved by Emma—perhaps not even bothering to finish the novel—some have suggested that its plot borrows from her very own Belinda. Emma Woodhouse is roughly the same age as Belinda, and she possesses many of the same character traits as Lady Delacour, whom Belinda is sent to live with. There are also similarities between the plots of the two narratives. Rebecca Romney observes that “Emma is by no means a simple imitation of Belinda. Instead, it is as If Austen is in dialogue with Edgeworth… Reading the two together feels something like a jazz session: one author tries out a melody; the other listens and plays back, building in their own unique deviations and flourishes” (Romney 291). Contemporary readers must have felt this symbiosis as well, given that “[f]or much of the nineteenth century, critics would rarely discuss Austen’s name without first bringing up Edgeworth” (Romney 296).

It is also worth mentioning the curious physical features of the present copy of Emma—the only that Gilson records as bound in wrappers. While a first edition, was this some sort of secondary binding given to Austen by the publisher, which she in turn sent to Edgeworth? There is something compelling in the idea of these volumes being true outliers, completely distinct from those sent directly by the publisher to Austen’s list of recipients. It’s likely this lot would have been handled by Austen herself, sent without anyone’s knowledge as she sought the favor of one of her idols.

Though the Edgeworth provenance is exceptional, the present copy is rendered even more remarkable by Professor Marilyn Butler’s ownership. Butler was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, and the first female head of a formerly all-male Oxford or Cambridge college. Butler also wrote Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (1972), as well as Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975)—two works that did much to shape our conceptions of Edgeworth and Austen, and broke the mold of post-war criticism from the generation of F.R. Leavis and Lionel Trilling. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975), for example, argued that Austen in contentious t.mes s, noting that she began to form her literary style in the 1790s, the decade of the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars. When the work was first published, it attracted attention for its controversial approach to ideas on Austen. Sutherland observes that through “Marilyn Butler's decisively ground-shifting study…at last, in the bicentenary of her birth, was an Austen firmly embedded in her own distinct (and distinctly different) historical moment” (Sutherland 24).

Today, Austen and Edgeworth scholars alike owe much to Butler, and her fresh take on the literary achievements of these authors. It is difficult to think of a more fitting individual to have possessed this copy of Emma.

An incredible survival, and an association copy of unparalleled importance.

REFERENCES:

Gilson A8; Le Faye, Deirdre, ed., Jane Austen’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Romeny, Rebecca, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf (New York: Marysue Rucci Books, 2005); Sutherland, Kathryn, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

PROVENANCE:

Maria Edgeworth, ownership signature in volume 1; by descent in the Edgeworth family to David Butler Esq., and Professor Marilyn Butler — Replica Shoes ’s London, 16 December 2010, lot 96

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