Collection of Six Original Signed Drawings for the Limited Editions Club Edition of "Pride and Prejudice

New Jersey, 1940. Fine. New Jersey? ca. 1940. Collection of six original pen drawings signed and captioned in pencil, all uniformly framed (drawings: 20x11.5cm; frames: 29.5x23cm.). Light yellowing of stock else Fine, not examined out of frames. The collection includes:

1. The probability of a rainy season

2. Such very superior dancing

3. Wickham's affection for Lydia

4. Mr. Bingley is come

5. Earnest conversation

6. Improvements on the harp

An exceptional collection of original illustrations by the Caldecott Honor-winning artist Helen Sewell (1896-1957), who gained recognition (truncated) eight years earlier for providing the illustrations to Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House in the Big Woods" (1932) as well as the seven ensuing Little House books.

Orphaned at a young age, Sewell was raised by her aunt and uncle in Brooklyn, New York, and at the age of twelve was the youngest pupil at the Pratt Institute where she studied under the avant-garde painter and sculptor Alexander Archipenko. In part thanks to the fame from illustrating Wilder's popular series, Sewell was chosen to illustrate the Limited Editions Club editions of Jane Austen's novels Pride and Prejudice (1940) and Sense and Sensibility (1957), as well as the Poems of Emily Dickinson (1952).

"It is not idle whimsy to say that Helen Sewell is Jane Austen in new incarnation...To give them a proper emotional spirit, she made these drawings in the style of the steel engravings which were used as illustrations for the books of Jane Austen's time...Every one of the fifty drawings made by Sewell is a devilish imitation of a nineteenth century steel engraving. In every one of them, there are literally thousands of pen lines...to make these pictures she had to have the wit of the devil and the charm of an archbishop" (from "The Heritage Club Sandglass," no. 3m, accompanying the Heritage Club reprint of "Pride and Prejudice"). See also the Britannica article on Sewell's life. (Inventory #: 31999)