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Austen, Jane., & Brock, C. E. (illus.).
Persuasion - [IN DELUXE FULL VELLUM].
Publisher: J. M. Dent & Co., E. P. Dutton & Co., London, New York;
Date of Publication: 1909
Stock Code: 14224
First Edition Thus. Octavo, pp., viii, 296. With 24 full-colour halftone plates on art paper, after water-colours by C. E. Brock, including tissue-guarded frontispiece and title-page, as called for. Original publisher’s delux binding of full vellum over boards, heavily gilt-stamped title and rose and basket pattern to upper board and spine. Top edge gilt, others uncut. Illustrated endpapers. Upper board slightly bowed, the very slightest spots of soiling to boards, very minimal shelf-wear to corners. Occasional slight toning and a few nicks to margins, but contents are generally clean and bright, and illustrations are particularly fresh. A very good copy. Part of the English Idylls series. Charles Edward Brock (1870-1938) was an influential and prolific water-colourist, line artist, and illustrator of novels. In 1909 Brock and his brother Harry (1875-1960) were tasked with creating new water-colour illustrations for Jane Austen’s six novels. Prior to that point, illustrators of Austen had tended to depict characters in Victorian, rather than Regency dress, the Brocks instead chose to painstakingly recreate Austen’s world as it would have appeared within her lifetime. As their biographer wrote: ‘both were attracted to the architecture, furniture, and costume of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and set about gathering period artefacts for their studio’. Brock was initially inspired by his contemporary Hugh Thomson (1860-1920), comparing the works of the two, Laura Caroll and John Wiltshire write: ‘Brock often achieves a telling interaction between his characters, where Thomson’s are often, in comparison, listless... And in general, Brock makes much more use of body language, his figures have more eye contact with one another, his style has a theatrical and often comic dynamism Thomson’s lack’. It was through these efforts that the Brocks radically transformed the depiction of Austen’s world to one that may now be familiar to us. The illustrations in this volume are lively, rich, and brimming with Regency-era details. £1250.00