The Novels. Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion. Illustrated by C. E. Brock

London; New York: J. M. Dent & Co.; E. P. Dutton & Co, 1907. First Brock editions of the complete novels of Jane Austen. Each volume with 24 colour plates by C. E. Brock. 8vo. Original gilt decorative vellum, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, pictorial endpapers. Near Fine, in custom cloth slipcases. Brock, C. E. First Brock editions of the complete novels of Jane Austen. Each volume with 24 colour plates by C. E. Brock. 8vo. C. E. Brock (1870-1938) first appeared as an illustrator of Jane Austen within Macmillan’s 1895-7 Illustrated Standard Novels series (with introductions by Austin Dobson), Brock illustrating only Pride and Prejudice, and Hugh Thomson illustrating the other 5 titles. This series was only illustrated in black and white, which better suited Thomson’s skilful use of line. A decade later, J.M. Dent, realising Brock’s potential as a colourist, commissioned him to redo the Pride and Prejudice suite, this time in colour, and to create colour illustrations for the other five Austen titles. Dent’s “Series of English Idylls” thus presents the first Brock illustrations for the complete Austen set and the first in colour. Brock was elected as a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1908, and certainly his vision of Austen’s world, its gentle graces and sharp ironies, is best expressed, as here, in colour. Furthermore, the colourful costumes and interior decor depicted in these illustrations are reputedly accurate to the Regency period, for Charles Brock and his brother Henry collected antique furniture and clothing so that their friends and relations could model for the artists in their Cambridge studio.