less in the corresponding years of her life." She was only twenty when
she began to write _First Impressions_, the perfect book which was not
published till seventeen years later with the title altered to _Pride
and Prejudice_. She wrote secretly for many years. Her family knew of
it, but the world did not--not even the servants or the visitors to the
house. She used to hide the little sheets of paper on which she was
writing when any one approached. She had not, apparently, a room to
herself, and must have written under constant threat of interruption.
She objected to having a creaking door mended on one occasion, because
she knew by it when any one was coming.

She got little encouragement to write. _Pride and Prejudice_ was offered
to a publisher in 1797: he would not even read it. _Northanger Abbey_
was written in the next two years. It was not accepted by a publisher,
however, till 1803; and he, having paid ten pounds for it, refused to
publish it. One of Miss Austen's brothers bought back the manuscript at
the price at which it had been sold twelve or thirteen years later; but
even then it was not published till 1818, when the author was dead.

The first of her books to appear was _Sense and Sensibility_. She had
begun to write it immediately after finishing _Pride and Prejudice_. It
was published in 1811, a good many years later, when Miss Austen was
thirty-six years old. The title-page merely said that it was written "By
a Lady." The author never put her name to any of her books. For an
anonymous first novel, it must be admitted, _Sense and Sensibility_ was
not unsuccessful. It brought Miss Austen £150--"a prodigious
recompense," she thought, "for that which had cost her nothing." The
fact, however, that she had not earned more than £700 from her novels by
the time of her death shows that she never became a really popular
author in her lifetime.