{{prxprf013.jpg}} || INTRODUCTION xiii

own person, and was never known to resent the manifold claims upon

her attention that were inevitable in a large family circle continually on

the move, however absorbed she may have been in her own work.

And as we now know, Jane Austen began scribbling, for her own

amusement and to the huge delight of those in the secret, at about the

age of fourteen, and more or less continuously for six years produced,

with no idea of publication, a scries of sparkling burlesque talcs and

fragments of delightful precocity. In 1795 she must, at least in her own

mind, have seriously determined to take up novebwriting as a profession,

and before the end of 1798 had planned, written, and considerably

revised the stories finally issued as Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey,

and Pride and Prejudice: the last-named being offered, in its earlier form,

for publication and declined by return of post. This concludes the

work done at Steventon. At Bath -- naturally -- Northanger Abbey (then

known as 'Susan') was considerably revised, and sold, in 1804, for ^10

to Messrs. Crossby and Co., of Stationers' Hall Court, who, however,

never considered it worth publishing.

Lady Susan, as shown by the watermark, cannot have been written

before 1805, and probably belongs to the end of their Bath life: the

unfinished The Watsons (largely incorporated in Emma) was almost

certainly written in Southampton during the year 1807.

It was, however, after settling at Chawton, during the last eight years

of her life, that all the novels were finally put into shape and passed by

their author's mature judgment; when also -- fortunately for herself and

for English literature -- she was able to secure publication practically on

completion. This period of remarkable activity began with consider^

able revisions of Sense and Sensibility (published 181 1) and Pride and

Prejudice (published 181 3). Then came the new novels, Mansfield Park

(published 18 14) and Emma (published 18 16).

Persuasion, the third Chawton tale, was 'finished' 18th July, and its

climax rewritten 6th August 18 16. Yet in March 18 17 she writes of

it as 'something which may, perhaps, appear about a twelvemonth

hence,' clearly implying that further revisions might prove to be required.

Northanger Abbey (no longer 'Susan' but now 'Miss Catherine'), having

been repurchased from Crossby, was next prepared for publication, but

this too was 'put upon the shelf' in March 18 17, without its author's

final approval throughout. From the January to March of 18 17 she was

engaged upon the first draft, scarcely more than a precis or notes for the

opening chapters, of a seventh novel recently printed as Sanditon, though

a legend exists in the family that Jane intended calling it The Brothers.

The years of Chawton are said to have been the happiest of Jane

 [[xiii]]