Jane Austen

Pasadena, CA: The Ampersand Press, 1948.

8vo. 8 7/8 x 5 3/4 inches. [iv], 16 pp. Rose ornament on title page and head of text, black-and-white portrait of Jane Austen; text clean, unmarked. Black cloth, printed paper front cover label; binding square and tight, no dust-jacket. Bookplate of Grant Dahlstrom/The Castle Press mounted on front free end-paper, although the paste has relaxed from the bookplate which is now loose. II921-002. Very Good.

FIRST EDITION. Richard Aldington was an English writer and poet, and an early associate of the Imagist movement. His 50-year writing career covered poetry, novels, criticism and biography. His contacts included writers T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Lawrence Durrell, C. P. Snow and others. Aldington served in the British Army from 1917 to 1919, and his war experience affected him deeply, forming the basis of much of his writing up to 1930. In 1942, Aldington relocated to the United States and began to focus on biographical writing. This thin volume provides a masterful analysis of the society within which Jane Austen grew up and wrote her novels, and identifies the aspects of her writing that makes the work beloved by "the average non-specialist persons for whom it is written."