Souvenirs for the bookish

Halfway through this year of Austen 250 celebrations, you may be considering what sort of merch would make an appropriate souvenir of the festivities. Should you get a T-shirt? A tote bag? A bone china tea set in a pale turquoise palette?

Or maybe you’re in the market for something a bit more . . . bookish? (Except not one of those ruinously expensive Austen first editions.) If so, you’ll soon have at least two options:

--British Library Publishing, which showcases work from the collection of the UK’s national library, plans to issue a three-volume facsimile of the first edition of Pride and Prejudice. The set, packaged in “a foiled, pale turquoise* clamshell case,” will reproduce every detail of the 1813 original, “printing errors intact, exactly as Jane’s own copy would have been.”

The facsimile won’t be available until September 16, but if you order yours now, you pay only £100 (about $135), a £25 discount from the list price. Still not exactly inexpensive, but as a bonus, they’re throwing in reproductions of the Austen letters in the British Library’s collection.

"We sought here to recreate, in part, the excitement felt when we saw these first-edition volumes and letters held here at the British Library," publisher John Lee told a book-trade publication. "Austen is a national treasure, as are these rare first editions."

--But maybe Pride and Prejudice isn’t your favorite Austen? Or you’d prefer something a bit more contemporary--a bit less like “Jane’s own copy”? If so, you might like the Folio Society’s forthcoming limited edition (scroll down) of all six completed novels, arriving on September 9.

No price has yet been announced, although with a run of only 750 six-volume sets, presumably the number won’t be low. A video clip the company posted to X in April gives a tantalizing glimpse of embroidery-style cloth covers rolling off an electric loom, and a May post offers a look at four of Sarah Young’s striking illustrations for Sense and Sensibility.

“We can’t wait to reveal the stories behind the making of this unique limited edition," Folio Society production director Kate Grimwade told an entertainment website. "It has been a spectacular and joyous process over the last few years."

My 1975 Folio Society Austen set

The Folio Society, an independent publisher known for making beautifully illustrated and crafted books, is hardly new to the Austen market: It currently sells a gorgeous set of the novels, with each of the six volumes introduced by a well-known writer, illustrated by a different artist, and priced at £55 (about $74). I own yet another set of Folio Society Austens, dating back to Our Jane’s bicentennial year of 1975, with engravings (apparently controversial—who knew?) by Joan Hassall.

But none of these books has that special Austen 250 cachet. So even if you’ve already got the T-shirt, it might be time to find space on your Jane Austen shelf.

*If you’re wondering why so much turquoise, it’s because of the famous Jane Austen birthstone ring. Which you can also own, in replica versions ranging from pretty cheap to pretty expensive.