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 GBP10 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-GBP10-that he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was by then the author of four popular novels.