Northanger Abbey. ILLUSTRATED

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. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and
sold in the same year for £10 to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who
decided against publishing. The bookseller was content to sell it back to the
novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum that he had paid for it at
the beginning, not knowing that the writer was already the author of four
popular novels. The novel was further revised before being brought out
posthumously in late December 1817 (1818 given on the title-page), as the first
two volumes of a four-volume set with Persuasion.

- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.