Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey; and, Persuasion. By Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan (as it was first called) was written about the years 1798-1799. Northanger Abbey was written by Austen in 1798, revised for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10 to a Bath bookseller, who after allowing it to remain for many years on his shelves, was content to sell it back to the novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum which he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was already the author of four popular novels. The novel was brought out posthumously in late December 1817 (given 1818 on the title-page), as the first two of a four-volume set with Persuasion