Gentlemen,—In the spring of the year 1803 a MS. novel in two vols., entitled Susan, was sold to you by a gentleman of the name of Seymour, and the purchase money £10 recd. at the same time. Six years have since passed, and this work, of which I am myself the Authoress, has never to the best of my knowledge appeared in print, tho' an early publication was stipulated for at the time of sale. I can only account for such an extraordinary circumstance by supposing the MS. by some carelessness to have been lost, and if that was the case am willing to supply you with another copy, if you are disposed to avail yourselves of it, and will engage for no farther delay when it comes into your hands. It will not be in my power from particular circumstances to command this copy before the month of August, but then if you accept my proposal you may depend on receiving it. Be so good as to send me a line in answer as soon as possible as my stay in this place will not exceed a few days. Should no notice be taken of this address, I shall feel myself at liberty to secure the publication of my work by applying elsewhere.
I am, Gentlemen, etc., etc.,
M. A. D.
Direct to Mrs. Ashton Dennis,
Post Office, Southampton
April 5, 1809.
With this letter was preserved the following reply:—
Madam,—We have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 5th inst. It is true that at the time mentioned we purchased of Mr. Seymour a MS. novel entitled Susan, and paid him for it the sum of £10, for which we have his stamped receipt, as a full consideration, but there was not any time stipulated for its publication, neither are we bound to publish it. Should you or anyone else [publish it] we shall take proceedings to stop the sale. The MS. shall be yours for the same as we paid for it.
For Crosby & Co.
I am yours, etc.
Richard Crosby.
From the fact that this letter was carefully preserved among Jane's correspondence, from the almost exact coincidence of the dates at which the writer was to leave Southampton, &c., and from the fact that a Mr. Seymour was Henry Austen's man of business, there can be no reasonable doubt that the letter refers to one of Jane Austen's works. It need cause no surprise that she should have written under an assumed name, or that she should have got some one else to write for her in view of the secrecy which she long maintained regarding the authorship of her novels. If we assume, then, that the letter concerns one of Jane Austen's novels—which novel is it? At first sight it might naturally seem to be the story called Lady Susan, which was published in the second edition of the Memoir; but there are two objections to this: one, that so far from making two volumes, Lady Susan could hardly have made more than one very thin volume; secondly, that Lady Susan is generally looked upon as an early and immature production; and Jane's judgment should have been too good to allow her to desire the publication of an inferior work at a time when she had already completed, in one form or another, three such novels as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. If, therefore, it was not Lady Susan—What was it? We cannot doubt that it was the novel we now know as Northanger Abbey. When that book was prepared for the press in 1816, it contained the following 'advertisement' or prefatory note:—
This little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for immediate publication. It was disposed of to a bookseller,[203] it was even advertised, and why the business proceeded no further, the author has never been able to learn.
So far, this accords closely enough with the history of the MS. Susan as related in the letter to Messrs. Crosby. For other details we must go to the Memoir,[204] where we read:—