The Complete Novels of Jane Austen (Wordsworth Library Collection)

Jane Austen is without question, one of England’s most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature’s most charismatic and believable heroines, she mesmerises her readers as much today as when her novels were first published.

Whether it is her sharp, ironic gaze at the Gothic genre invoked by the adventures of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey; the diffident and much put-upon Fanny Price struggling to cope with her emotions in Mansfield Park; her delightfully paced comedy of manners and the machinations of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility; the quiet strength of Anne Elliot in Persuasion succeeding in a world designed to subjugate her very existence; Emma – ‘a heroine whom no one but myself will like’ teased Austen – yet another irresistible character on fire with imagination and foresight; or the efforts of Mrs Bennet in trying to find a good match for each of her five daughters in Pride and Prejudice.

Our Library Collection hardback series has been completely redesigned, for launch in November 2024. The books are now finished in black, soft-touch linen, cloth bound with metallic gold and matt coloured foil blocking. They come complete with co-ordinated head and tail bands, a silk ribbon marker and coloured spray edges. The pages are sewn, and the end papers are in two colours featuring an exclusive design by Holly Dunn. Northanger Abbey; the diffident and much put-upon Fanny Price struggling to cope with her emotions in Mansfield Park; her delightfully paced comedy of manners and the machinations of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility; the quiet strength of Anne Elliot in Persuasion succeeding in a world designed to subjugate her very existence; Emma – ‘a heroine whom no one but myself will like’ teased Austen – yet another irresistible character on fire with imagination and foresight; or the efforts of Mrs Bennet in trying to find a good match for each of her five daughters in Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen is as sure-footed in her steps through society’s whirlpools of convention and prosaic mores as she is in her sometimes restrained but ever precise and enduring prose.