Penguin Clothbound Classics: Jane Austen: The Complete Works, 7-Book Boxed Set, Designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 

Happy dance in the Jane Austen book world today. With the release of Coralie Bickford-Smith’s new cover design of Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings, the Penguin Clothbound Classics set of Jane Austen novels now includes seven books: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey.

BOOK SET DESCRIPTION

Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their circle, she painted vivid portraits of English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close. Each of these novels is a love story and a story about marriage—marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not mere romances. Ironic, comic, and wise, they are masterly studies of the society Austen observed. The seven books in this box set—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Love and Freindship (early writings and juvenilia)—contain some of the most brilliant, dazzling prose in the English language. Part of Penguin’s beautiful Hardcover Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

Since Pride and Prejudice, the first book in series was introduced in 2009, book designer Bickford Smith has completed over 20 new covers of classic novels. Beside Austen, the series includes books by authors Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Elliot, William Shakespeare, Wilkie Collins, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and others. The covers are inspired by the style of design from the early twentieth-century with motifs indicative of the stories in the novels. The pink shoes on the cover of Love and Freindship are so charming. 

BOOK SET INFORMATION

• Jane Austen: The Complete Works, 7-Book Boxed Set: Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Persuasion; Love and Freindship
• Penguin Classics; Box edition (November 24, 2015)
• Hardcover (clothbound) ‎ 3120 pages
• ISBN: 978-0141395203
• Genre: Classic Literature

ADDITIONAL INFO | ADD TO GOODREADS

We received a review copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Austenprose is an Amazon affiliate. Cover image courtesy of Penguin Classics © 2015; text Laurel Ann Nattress © 2012, austenprose.com. Last updated on 6 March 2022.