Publishing Options for Women During Jane Austen’s Lifetime

Several people of late have asked me of Austen and self-publishing, especially as many JAFF writers self-publish their books.

I was fortunate to have come to the genre when traditional publishers had taken note of the trend. They scooped up several of us who were attempting to self publish our books on sites, many of which no longer exist, and LONG before there was Kindle Direct Publishing, Kobo, IngramSpark, Nook, etc. At that time, you would not have found JAFF authors at large book festivals. Heck, the Atlanta area based Austen group hosted many of us at the Decatur Book Festival. I cannot recall exactly, but there must have been around a dozen of us. We also were part of a panel discussion at the festival.

My publisher at the time, Ulysses Press, even scheduled me for a one day symposium at the Smithsonian on mixing Austen with the paranormal. I was booked along with Ben Withers, author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. That was in 2010. Vampire Darcy’s Desire (released 1 October 2009) was my fourth novel with Ulysses Press, and, at the time, all the publishers were attempting to jump on the “Twilight” bandwagon. After all, books in the “Twilight” series are said to have been based in the classics: Twilight on Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, New Moon on William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Eclipse on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, and Breaking Dawn on a second Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

But what of Austen’s options? “Novels” during the early Regency were geared towards the female reader; therefore, the door opened, if only a crack for the female writer to step through. The female writers of the time assisted Jane Austen in several ways, among those “leg ups” we find the influence on her writing and building an audience for Austen’s early works.

The “early” female authors faced something that Austen did not. They faced public criticism, as women of the time, especially those of genteel birth, did not seek employment of any kind. Women were not to pursue fame and a career. They were discouraged by their husbands and families from publishing their works. Austen was fortunate to have a family who encouraged her writing, but even she published anonymously. Austen’s father, the Reverend Austen, approached a publisher for Jane when she was but two and twenty. Later, Jane’s brother acted as her representative with the publisher under which she served.

18th Century Literature Analysis from Dr. Octavia Cox ~

Jane Austen & Mary Wollstonecraft ~ Sense and Sensibility & A Vindication of the Rights of Woman on YouTube

Women of the period had limited means at their disposal under which they might see their works come to fruition:

(1) Publishing by subscription – Subscribers signed up to purchase a novel. When enough subscriptions were guaranteed, then the publisher released the book.

(2) Publishing by profit sharing – The publisher released the book at his expense. Copies were sold until a profit was made. Only then did the author received a fee for her work. If no profit was made, the author received nothing, but the pleasure of seeing her name in print.

(3) Publishing by selling the copyright – The author took a chance in selling the copyright to the publisher. She would receive a fee for the sale, but nothing beyond that. If the book  made a profit, only the publisher benefited.

(4) Publishing on commission – For this venture, the author paid all the costs for the book’s publication. The publisher acted as the author’s distributor. In the sales, the publisher would earn a 10% fee from the profits. If the book saw no profits, the loss rested on the author’s shoulders alone. This was the method Jane Austen used for her releases. Jane Austen published her first book at the age of four and thirty.

First Edition title page of Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” published in 1811

Austen’s Publishing History:

I thought we might take a quick look at the process of having Austen’s works published. Most of her story lines went through several revisions before the lady knew satisfaction. She reportedly made extensive changes in both “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice.”

Sense and Sensibility was completed in 1795, but it did not know publication until 1811. (That is a sixteen year span. For authors who think they will write the next best seller and have it immediately caught up by an agent and publisher, this is a very sobering fact.)

Pride and Prejudice knew a similar fate as did Sense and Sensibility. Austen wrote the original manuscript in 1796. It was published in 1813. (Seventeen years of rejection. Such makes me admire Austen more, for if one has ever received a rejection letter, it is disheartening. It creates a rip in one’s soul. Many of us think of our novels as our “book babies.” It as if no one likes our children.)

Mansfield Park was finished in 1812 and was published two years later in 1814. (With this novel, Austen attempted sentimentality. Unfortunately, “Mansfield Park” characteristically does not enjoy the same level of popularity as Austen’s other novels, though we have seen some uptick in the current JAFF marketplace.)

Emma was finished in 1814 and published in 1815. Obviously, the success of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice aided Austen in this process. Notice the change of publishers for this book.

The Jane Austen’s House website adds a bit more to Austen publication history in speaking of Emma.

“Emma was Jane Austen’s fourth published novel, and the last to be published during her lifetime. Jane Austen drafted the novel in 1814, in Chawton, around the same time that Mansfield Park was published. Once completed, it was submitted to her new publisher John Murray who offered £450 for it.  However, this large sum was also to include the copyrights of Mansfield Park and Sense & Sensibility. Jane refused, and arranged again to publish on commission, in a print run of 2,000 copies.

“Emma appeared on the 23rd of December in 1815. The title page stated that the work was ‘By the Author of “Pride & Prejudice” &c. &c.’; it also included a dedication (by permission) to the Prince Regent. The public reaction was mixed, and the print run did not sell as well as expected; by February 1817 only around 1500 copies had sold and Jane had earned only £38.18, after the initial loss was deducted on the second edition of Mansfield Park.

“Jane had twelve copies of the first edition to give to family and friends.”

Published posthumously in 1817. Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey “about the years 98 & 99,” according to a note left by her sister, Cassandra. Austen was 23-24 years old, and it seems likely that her first visit to Bath in 1797 inspired her to set part of the novel in that city. We must remember the book was originally named Susan, but was changed at publication. (Nearly two decades passed between the novel’s inception and the final publication.)

I found this tidbit on the JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) website quite amusing. “After completing Susan, Jane Austen set it aside until the spring of 1803, when Henry Austen’s lawyer, William Seymour, sold the manuscript on her behalf to publisher Benjamin Crosby & Co. for £10, with the understanding that it would be published soon. When six years passed with no activity, Austen decided to communicate with the publisher herself. In April 1809, a few months before moving to Chawton, she wrote to Crosby using the pseudonym “M^rs Ashton Dennis.” Reiterating the original agreement, she tactfully offered to send another copy of the manuscript if it had been lost, but she closed the letter with a warning that if she received no reply, she would feel “at liberty to secure the publication of my work, by applying elsewhere.”  And she signed the letter with a witty jab:  

I am Gentlemen &c &c   

“In reply, Richard Crosby denied that the firm had agreed to early publication and threatened to take steps to ‘stop the sale’ if Susan were published elsewhere. He also offered to sell the manuscript back for the original £10, but Austen did not take him up on the offer—presumably because she didn’t have the money to do so. Finally, in the spring of 1816, when she was in a position to reclaim the rights to Susan, her brother Henry bought the manuscript back from Crosby for £10 on her behalf.”

Persuasion was completed in 1815 and published posthumously in 1817. It was finished a mere six months before her death. We know as Austen readers that this particular novel had a major revision along the way. “Persuasion is undoubtedly the most mature of Austen’s works because it exposes itself to a deeper investigation of emotional identity, of both the linear and cyclical passage of time, and of the social, political, and moral order in the region of 19th century Britain that, for Anne Elliot, comprises her world.” (JASNA)

These two novels were published together.

Unfinished novels include The Watsons and Sanditon.

The Watsons is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803 while Austen was in Bath, but it was abandoned after the passing of her father in January 1805. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen’s niece was published in 1850. The manuscript fragment itself was published in 1871. Further completions and adaptations of the story have continued to the present day.

It had no formal chapter divisions and was approximately 7,500 words long. The fragment was given the title of The Watsons and published in 1871 by the novelist’s nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874), in the revised and augmented edition of his A Memoir of Jane Austen.

Sanditon proved to be longer than was The Watsons, and with the popularity of the PBS series, I thought some of you might like a longer explanation regarding this piece.

The latter part of the manuscript was written in pencil because Austen became too weak to hold a pen, and on 18 March her illness forced her to abandon the novel altogether. She had completed eleven chapters and nine pages of a twelfth. She died four months later. History Extra provides us even more information on this time in Austen’s life.

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts tells us, “The untitled manuscript, written throughout in Jane Austen’s own hand, is the working draft of a substantial and evolving work of fiction. It totals 120 pages, with between 20 and 28 lines per page, depending on the size and openness of the hand – about 24,000 words, and perhaps one-fifth of a completed novel. Austen’s hand dates the writing of the draft at three points: in the top left hand corner of the first page of Booklet 1 is written ‘Jan: 27. – 1817’; Booklet 3 is similarly inscribed on its opening page ‘March 1.^st’; while folio 20^v has written below its one line of text ‘March 18.’, the date on which Austen appears to have set the work aside. The manuscript is contained in three small bundles of ordinary writing paper, cut down and folded to form three booklets, the third being smaller in size but also thicker than the first and second, which are roughly similar. James Edward Austen-Leigh provided a précis and quotations from the manuscript, under the title ‘The Last Work’, in the second edition of his Memoir of Jane Austen (1871), and R. W. Chapman published the first complete transcription under the title Fragment of a Novel in 1925. Yet ‘Sanditon’ seems to have been an unofficial title used within the Austen family at least from the mid-nineteenth century.¹ A paper facsimile edition of the manuscript was published in 1975, with an introduction by B. C. Southam.²

“When Chapman transcribed the manuscript it was still in family ownership. In the division at Cassandra’s death, it had passed, along with the Persuasion chapters, to Austen’s niece Anna Lefroy (1793-1872). Either James Edward Austen-Leigh, her half-brother, worked directly with the autograph for the second edition of his Memoir (1871), or Anna Lefroy, more expert as to its contents, supplied an account. This was the first public mention of the unfinished novel. From Anna Lefroy it passed down through the Lefroys to Mary Isabella Lefroy (1860-1939), daughter of George Benjamin Lefroy and Anna Lefroy’s granddaughter, and so Jane Austen’s great-great niece. She presented it to King’s College, Cambridge, in October 1930, in memory, as she told Chapman at the time, ‘of my sister, & brother in law she the gt gt niece of “Jane” & he the gt nephew, & the most popular Provost, & Provostess “Kings” has ever had.’³ Isabel Lefroy, as she was known, refers here to her sister Florence Emma (1857-1926) and Florence’s husband Augustus Austen-Leigh (1840-1905), Provost of the College, 1889-1905, and a son of James Edward, the biographer. Despite this reconnection of the Austen-Leighs and Lefroys, Augustus’s brother and nephew do not seem to have consulted the manuscript for their expanded family biography of 1913, which repeats the Memoir’s brief description along with its errors. Another copy of the manuscript, made by Cassandra Austen, had a different descent, passing down through Jane’s brother Francis’s family – to Janet Austen, later Sanders, eldest daughter of Frank’s fifth son Edward Thomas Austen. It was from her father that Mrs Sanders got the information, which she communicated to Chapman in February 1925 after the publication of his transcription, that Austen’s intended title for the novel was ‘The Brothers’.⁴ Cassandra Austen’s copy of the manuscript, also untitled, is now in Jane Austen’s House Museum, Chawton. Anna Lefroy wrote a continuation of the story, the manuscript of which (‘112 pages, with revisions, deletions, corrections and pastedowns … sewn in three sections’), described as ‘the property of great-great nephews of Jane Austen’, was sold at Sotheby’s on 13 December 1977, Lot 266. Lot 267 in the same sale was a two-page MS in Anna Lefroy’s hand ‘about the composition, the plot and her own possession of the manuscript of “Sanditon”’.⁵“

Footnotes used in this excerpt:

1. A Memoir of Jane Austen (2^nd edn, London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1871), pp. 181-194; Fragment of A Novel written by Jane Austen January-March 1817 [ed. R. W. Chapman] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) (Gilson, F6); Anna Lefroy refers to the work as ‘Sanditon’ in a family letter of 1869 (see A Memoir of Jane Austen, ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 184). 

2. Sanditon: an unfinished novel by Jane Austen, with an introduction by B. C. Southam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) (Gilson F22). 

3. In a letter of 28 October[1930], kept with the Sanditon MS. 

4.In a letter of 8 February 1825, kept with the Sanditon MS. Janet Sanders, ‘Sanditon’, Times Literary Supplement, 19 February 1925, p. 120. 

5.Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Valuable Autograph Letters, Literary Manuscripts, and Historical Documents (London, 1977), pp. 127-28; Gilson F6.