Jane Austen firsts
A high spot of the Sotheby’s sale of December 12 was a group of Jane Austen firsts in the original boards. Illustrated above right is the former Lady Shelley/Earl Spencer/Jerome Kern copy of her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility of 1811, the blue boards with cream paper spines, which made $70,000 (£49,295).
The labels on Vols 2-3 of Pride and Prejudice were facsimiles, but the blue and cream boards were ve…