Austen in a Competitive Literary Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Editions

This chapter explores the ways in which illustrations to nineteenth-century editions of Austen’s novels shaped the reading experience, focusing in particular on late nineteenth-century editions of Sense and Sensibility (1811). On the expiry of the copyright to the novels, more editions, by a variety of publishers, began to appear. More competition meant publishers needed to differentiate their editions from others in the marketplace, and the inclusion of illustrations was one way of making a publication more distinct. Every illustration is an interpretation and steers the reading experience, affected by factors such as where it is placed in the book. Furthermore, as Devoney Looser reminds us, ‘each artist made his (and, in very few cases, her) imprint on the material, each with its own potential to shape readers’ first impressions – and sometimes longer-lasting ones, too’ (Looser 2017, 9). This chapter takes two editions of Sense and Sensibility, published in 1887 and 1896, priced at 6d and 5s respectively, as case studies to explore how illustrations interpreted Austen’s texts and influenced readers’ experiences.