Jane Austen
During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen published four generally well-received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish "Sense and Sensibility", which, like all of Jane Austen's novels except "Pride and Prejudice", was published "on commission", that is, at the author's financial risk. When publishing on commission, publishers would advance the costs of publication, repay themselves as books were sold and then charge a 10% commission for each book sold, paying the rest to the author. If a novel did not recover its costs through sales, the author was responsible for them. The alternative to selling via commission was the selling the copyright, where an author received a one-time payment from the publisher for the manuscript, which occurred with "Pride and Prejudice". Austen's experience with "Susan" (the manuscript that became "Northanger Abbey") where she sold the copyright to the publisher Crosby & Sons for £10, who did not publish the book, forcing her to buy back the copyright in order to get her work published, left Austen leery of this method of publishing. The final alternative, of selling by subscription, where a group of people would agree to buy a book in advance, was not an option for Austen as only authors who were well known or had an influential aristocratic patron who would recommend an up-coming book to their friends, could sell by subscription. "Sense and Sensibility" appeared in October 1811, and was described as being written "By a Lady". As it was sold on commission, Egerton used expensive paper and set the price at 15 shillings.
Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among young aristocratic opinion-makers; the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen's novels were published in larger editions than was normal for this period. The small size of the novel-reading public and the large costs associated with hand production (particularly the cost of handmade paper) meant that most novels were published in editions of 500 copies or less to reduce the risks to the publisher and the novelist. Even some of the most successful titles during this period were issued in editions of not more than 750 or 800 copies and later reprinted if demand continued. Austen's novels were published in larger editions, ranging from about 750 copies of "Sense and Sensibility" to about 2,000 copies of "Emma". It is not clear whether the decision to print more copies than usual of Austen's novels was driven by the publishers or the author. Since all but one of Austen's books were originally published "on commission", the risks of overproduction were largely hers (or Cassandra's after her death) and publishers may have been more willing to produce larger editions than was normal practice when their own funds were at risk. Editions of popular works of non-fiction were often much larger.
Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV series)
Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice" had already been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations, including BBC television versions in 1938, 1952, 1958, 1967 and 1980. In the autumn of 1986, after watching a preview of Austen's "Northanger Abbey", Sue Birtwistle and Andrew Davies agreed to adapt "Pride and Prejudice", one of their favourite books, for television. Birtwistle in particular felt that a new adaptation on film would serve the drama better than the previous videotaped "Pride and Prejudice" television adaptations, which looked too "undernourished" and "unpoetic". The needs of TV scheduling forced Davies to change his original plan of a five-episode adaptation to six. Birtwistle and Davies then offered the first three scripts to ITV in late 1986 to build on the guaranteed BBC audience, but the recent TV adaptation led to a delay. When ITV announced its renewed interest in 1993, Michael Wearing of the BBC commissioned the final scripts with co-funding from the American A&E Network. Director Simon Langton and the art department joined pre-production in January and February 1994.
Although Birtwistle and Davies wished to remain true to the tone and spirit of the novel, they wanted to produce "a fresh, lively story about real people", not an "old studio-bound BBC drama that was shown in the Sunday teatime slot". Emphasising sex and money as the themes of the story, Davies shifted the focus from Elizabeth to Elizabeth and Darcy and foreshadowed Darcy's role in the narrative resolution. To portray the characters as real human beings, Davies added short backstage scenes such as the Bennet girls dressing up to advertise themselves in the marriage market. New scenes where men pursue their hobbies with their peers departed from Jane Austen's focus on women. The biggest technical difficulty proved to be adapting the long letters in the second half of the story. Davies employed techniques such as voice-overs, flashbacks, and having the characters read the letters to themselves and to each other. Davies added some dialogue to clarify events from the novel to a modern audience but left much of the novel's dialogue intact.