get self HTML code with jQuery [duplicate]

Question

<div>
  <a href="#" class="selected">link1</a>  
  <a href="#">link1</a>
</div>

and using following

$('.selected').html() I get

link1

as a return value.

How can I get full html code of the selected DOM element, in this example to get

<a href="#" class="selected">link1</a>

instead?

thanks

Answer 1

jQuery object:

$('.selected')

become to DOM object:

$('.selected')[0]

UPDATE:

var str = $("<div />").append($('.selected').clone()).html();
console.log(str);