Collecting copies of Jane Austen’s books is a popular Janeite pastime. The wealthy seek out rare and valuable first editions. The globe-trotting track down translations in every country they visit. The artistic look for beautiful, unusual, or completely silly cover designs.
And now we have word of a new miniature edition of Austen’s Juvenilia, packaged in an attractive floral cover. As a bonus, it comes with a Gucci handbag.
I admit it’s possible that the handbag, which retails for $3,500 to $7,500, depending on style and materials, is the main attraction for certain buyers. But I prefer to concentrate on the pocket-size Austen (pictured here – scroll down) that Gucci has thrown in at no extra charge.
Gucci seems to be on a bit of an Austen kick this year: back in February, the invitation to the company’s Milan fashion show came in the form of a vinyl record whose B side featured the rapper A$AP Rocky reading Captain Wentworth’s love letter to Anne Elliot. And during the show itself, models carried clutch purses designed to look like copies of Persuasion (pictured here -- scroll down).
Why Austen, you may ask? Gucci’s web site explains that the Juvenilia are “short stories written by English writer Jane Austen during her teenage years from 1787-1793, a time during which she was free from censorship or societal pressure. The creative chaos and the continuous contradictions which characterize the stories are the same pillars we witness in Gucci’s collections.”
This pitch sounds a bit like a (badly written and commercialized) version of the familiar thesis that Austen was able to express her true self only in her madcap adolescent writings and was later forced to tamp down her authentically anarchic spirit in order to get published.
Whatever you think of that view -- I'm not convinced, but never mind -- the main reason Austen was “free from censorship or societal pressure” while writing the Juvenilia is that, as far as we know, they were never read by anyone outside her family until long afte her death. Presumably, Gucci would prefer a bit more public exposure for its products.