200-year-old Jane Austen Book, Literary Mystery

KRISTA PREHL

Teacher seeks to solve mystery of 200-year-old Jane Austen book - The tattered book with the small golden stag embossed on its cover, bearing the initials “JA” underneath, arrived in March in an envelope that read, “Ayer High School. ATTN: English Department.”

Along with the musty leatherbound book there was a letter. It had a picture of a rose in the bottom righthand-corner, and was addressed to “anyone who cares.”

Eleanor Capasso, once she realized what she might have in her possession, cared deeply.

As a rare book collector and head of the English department at Ayer-Shirley Regional High School, Capasso said that being sent what she believes could be a first edition of a Jane Austen novel felt a lot like winning the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

“This is what English teachers live for,” said Capasso. “This — and being published as novelists.”

The book, called “Persuasion,” was Austen’s final novel. It was first published in 1817, not long after the author’s death. Capasso’s book says 1818 on it, but publishers of the time were known to post-date books.

Capasso ran around the school, looking for colleagues in her department to share the news with.

“Oh, my goodness. Myself and a colleague upstairs — literally, we cried,” she said. “This just showed we are literary geeks.”

The book’s authenticity has not yet been independently verified.

Deidre Lynch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, and an Austen expert, said for the book to be an authentic first edition, it would have had to have been printed in a set of four volumes, alongside Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.”

Lynch said, based on photos sent to her by the Globe, that the book could actually date back to around 1900.

“Even a century ago, a first edition of Austen would be awfully valuable,” she said in an e-mail. “And so, an unusual school prize.”

Capasso said the book was sent to the school by Alice B. Bantle of Pawleys Island, S.C.

Bantle explained in the letter that she had found the book in a box of “junk” in her mother’s garage. She said her mother had lived in Dudley, Mass., and used to go to auctions to bid on “boxes of various items” for fifty cents, or $1.

“Even though ‘Persuasion’ is in very bad shape,” Bantle wrote, “It might be of interest to someone in your English Department, or traced back to its original family.”

Bantle wanted to find the book a new home.

According to an inscription on the inside of the book, the original owner was a woman named Lillian M. Flood. Flood had won the book as a prize in May 1900, at Ayer High School.

Capasso plans to honor Bantle’s request to find the book’s rightful owners.

“I want to see if there is a family in town who can claim it,” said Capasso. “In my opinion, it’s an heirloom. I want to see if I can find its family.”

Until then, it will be housed in a special case at the high school.

Capasso has not reached back out to Bantle. But she intends to send her a handwritten letter to inform her that the hunt for Flood’s family members is on.

Capasso has the time, she said, because it’s almost school vacation week.

“My vacation will be spent at Town Hall,” looking at records, and sifting through old high school yearbooks, she said. “It’s not quite the Bahamas.”

But having the book feels just as good as the sun would on her face.

“For an English teacher, this is like the Holy Grail,” she said. “This makes my career to have in my possession a possible first edition.”