Arts Vanity: On the Jane Austen Macmillan Collector’s Library Box Set, and How Physical Books Carry More than Just Stories

In Sept. 2019, my dad handed me a very exciting package: the Macmillan Collector's Library Jane Austen Box Set. Each spine was light turquoise from the middle-up and gold from the middle-down, and all six titles sat prettily in the box, its sides decorated with intricate gold foliage.

To be honest, my first reaction was mixed, perhaps hinging on disappointment. I had ordered the box online as a birthday gift, but I hadn’t checked the measurements. The books were all pocket-sized, officially known as octodecimo, with each cover measuring around 4 by 6 inches. In comparison, a traditional paperback is a duodecimo book, made of pages that are 5 by almost 8 inches. Each Austen was a little larger than the palm of my hand.

I believe my mom sensed my hesitation, as I remember her commenting that the set looked like a lovely box of chocolates. I opened one of them, and while the gilt edges and detailed illustrations were indeed beautiful, I was a tinge worried that the small print would make reading difficult and that the set would remain on the shelves as just a beautiful decoration. However, my Jane Austen collection box set has now become one of my most prized possessions.

When I think of a book, I initially think of the story inside of it. I think of the characters, the plot lines, the writing, or even a specific quote. It is another thing altogether to think of the physicality of books, how a specific copy feels, how the pages smell, and how one page may be stained with a dried drop of coffee, no matter how much you tried to clean it out. I truly love all of Austen’s books, and “Persuasion” is one of my all-time favorites. Still, when I think of Austen’s works, the first thought that comes to my mind isn’t the stories, but my box set and its copies.

A couple months after my birthday, when a big earthquake hit my city, I remember trying to catch the flickering street lights to read pages of “Pride and Prejudice,” as our family drove around at night to wait for the aftershocks to die down. I remember how the copy of “Persuasion” fit perfectly in my coat pocket, as I carried it around the first weeks of high school and read it on the bench, with my sister by my side, as we waited for the bus to pick us up.

In an increasingly digitized world, it can be tempting to think of physical books as something of the past. At the same time, they continue to dominate, out-selling digital ones 4 to 1. In 2023, physical books led in sales in the vast majority of countries around the world, with the United States having a 10 percent gap between physical and digital sales, and the UK an almost 35 percent gap, in particular. It is safe to say that physical books continue to hold a special place for many.

And it isn’t difficult to see why. There is something distinctive about holding a physical copy in your hands, going through the pages one by one, flipping through a new title in the bookstore or leaving an annotation or a sticky tab in the margins of a well-loved one.

When I think of books, I think of my Jane Austen box set, and the six titles included inside. I think of the fact that other people may have the same one, but its presence will hold other memories for them as well.

I have to note, though, that I believe digital reading has its advantages. Digital books are accessible, for example, if you want to read something that’s not available in your country; they are portable, if you want to carry many readings at once; and, as a college student, they sometimes make taking and organizing notes easier.

However, the physicality of the book is fascinatingly different. Physical books symbolize relationships. I think physical books make perfect gifts, and love choosing the perfect one for the right person, but couldn’t imagine gifting a digital copy in the same manner.

And they symbolize my own relationship with reading. There is nothing like looking at the pages of a battered childhood favorite and stopping at one, and immediately getting transported back to where I was when I read a scene and what was happening in my life. On the other hand, the portable PDF files have a vacuum-like quality about them — no matter how many times I turn to them, they feel the same on each visit.

When I go back to my Jane Austen box set, it reminds me of a transitional point in my reading journey. Getting the complete collection at the same moment pushed me to venture into reading classics in English more consistently. I read the original Austens after reading the ones in the Albanian translation first. I compared the two, placing the pages side-by-side, and that itself fueled a lifelong love and interest in the art of translating. Having the physical copies and looking at them is an act of commitment — it makes me remember them, turn back to them, and handle them just for the sake of having them in my hands.

Ever since arriving at college, a lot of my reading has been done online. Internationally flying alone isn’t particularly friendly to transporting large quantities of books, so I’ve been trying to build my collection little by little, one travel session at a time.

Still, on my first journey to the US, I made sure to take two in particular — the complete poetry of Albanian poet and fallen dissident Trifon Xhagjika, one of two with the other left at home, and my copy of “Persuasion,” both crammed at the back of my overfilled backpack. As I talked with my mom over video calls, I looked at the bookshelves behind her and the empty gap created in the box set, then turned to the copy sitting on my dorm table. When I went back for winter break, I returned the copy after rereading it once more, and selected another, thinking about how this one would look and feel when in another room, in another place.

—Incoming Books Executive Erlisa Demneri can be found reminiscing about the past while staring at her Jane Austen box set. Other physical-book supporters and Jane Austen aficionados can share their memories by contacting her at erlisa.demneri@thecrimson.com.