Sign In

Jane Austen's First Published Novel— With Rare Half-Titles

London: Printed for the author, by C. Roworth Published by T. Egerton, 1811. (All three volumes printed by C. Roworth).

Sense and Sensibility, which Jane Austen began in 1795 as the epistolary work Elinor and Marianne, became her first published novel in 1811 and was likely printed in the smallest run of them all at 1000 or fewer. After First Impressions (the first version of Pride and Prejudice) was rejected by a publisher and Susan (the first version of Northanger Abbey) had been accepted but not published, Jane and brother Henry Austen found a publisher in Thomas Egerton, who published the novel on commission (Gilson). The success of Sense and Sensibility earned it a second edition, the author a royalty of £140, and the publication of Pride and Prejudice in 1813. Sir Walter Scott, in his 1816 unsigned review of Emma for the Quarterly Review, praised the new style of novel in which Austen wrote, with the author, "presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him."