First editions of Jane Austen’s most popular book, Pride and Prejudice of 1813, in contemporary bindings don’t come along often. But one such prize – a copy with a rather distant but nonetheless attractive family link – appeared at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium) in Nottingham on March 22-23.
This three-volume copy, in now slightly rubbed half calf and marbled boards of the period, bore at the head of the title-page the ownership signature of the Reverend Edward Graves Meyrick of Ramsbury in Wiltshire.
Meyrick was a teacher at the school where Jane’s favourite nephew and her first biographer, James Edward Austen-Lee, had been sent as a boarder at the age of 13 – just a couple of years before Jane’s book was published.