A copy of Austen’s Persuasion, a first American edition, sold at a Bloomsbury auction on December 10 for $3000.  Here are the details:

88. AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1817). Persuasion. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832. 2 volumes. 8vo (193 x 116 mm). Publisher’s linen-weave cloth-backed boards, paper spine labels, uncut. Condition: rear endpaper lacking in second volume, loss to lower corner of same in first volume, some very light scattered spotting in first volume; labels chipped to remnants, light shelfwear with some minor exposure to board edges. Provenance: J. Kellog and Co., Mobile, Alabama (contemporary bookseller’s label to front pastedown); V. Russell (contemporary owners signature in top margin of titles).   a wholly unsophisticated copy of the first american edition, unut and in original boards. Austen’s last completed novel, originally published with Northanger Abbey in 1818, here making it’s first appearance in United States. A scarce edition, of which only 1250 copies were printed. “Relatively few copies of the 1832-33 Philadelphia editions are known to survive” (See Gilson p.98). This copy without the publisher’s catalogue, but Gilson states that not all copies had them. Gilson: B3

 Sold for $3000
Sale NY022, 10th December 2008