Susan (as it was first called) was written circa 1798-99. 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. In the spring of 1816, the bookseller was content to sell it back to the novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum-£10-that he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was by then the author of four popular novels.