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.
Jane Austen in popular culture
The Iranian writer Azar Nafisi recalled teaching Austen secretly in Iran in the 1990s (in the Islamic Republic of Iran Austen is banned as a "degenerate" Western writer) to a group of teenage girls who loved Austen's stories which feature women who fall in love with men who are worthy of their affections, which was so different from their own lives. Nafisi noted in the Islamic Republic of Iran where wife-beating is legal, "love is forbidden, banished from the public sphere" and sex is "violently suppressed", her students fell in love with an author whose books feature female "rebels" who defiantly say "no" to "silly mothers", "incompetent fathers" and a "rigidly orthodox society", and moreover get away with it. An American academic who went on "Radio Times" web broadcast to talk about Austen recalled being besieged with callers of an Asian background. One Iranian woman, living in the United States, called in to say she had first read Austen after her teenage daughter brought home "Sense and Sensibility", which made her cry as she had experienced nothing like this in her own culture, where dating is forbidden and marriages are arranged. Another caller was a Chinese woman whose first Austen book was "Pride and Prejudice", which she read in translation after the ban in China on Austen had been lifted after the end of the Cultural Revolution, saying she nothing read anything so moving and romantic before. The Chinese woman added after seeing all of the violence and horror of the Cultural Revolution when the streets of China were soaked with human blood, so many lives were ruined, and so many had behaved so badly that reading "Pride and Prejudice" she gave her hope in humanity again.