Note 9 — JANE AUSTEN.

“Persuasion” was published, together with “Northanger Abbey,” by Mr. Murray, in 1818, the year after Jane Austen’s death. The proceeds of her books which had fallen to her share in her lifetime were seven hundred pounds, but how the sum was apportioned to each novel we are not told. If contemporary favour is rarely a test of a book’s merit, still less is the sum of money which it fetches to begin with. Among the lady novelists of her day—none of whom, not even Maria Edgeworth or Susan Ferrier, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with Jane Austen—there were several whose pecuniary gains must have been double and treble hers.