Jane Austen is probably the best-loved female novelist in the English language. And yet in her own time, she withheld her name from the title pages of her published works, preferring simply to state that they were written ‘by a Lady’ or by ‘the author of Sense and Sensibility’. It was only after Austen’s death in 1817 that her books appeared under her own name, beginning with the double volume of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.
In our Rare Books collection at Marlborough, we hold a copy of a novel by another female writer, Frances Burney, who was a generation older than Austen, and who is considered to have been a role model for the young writer. The book in question is Burney’s third novel, Camilla, a Picture of Youth, which was issued in a five-volume set in London in 1796. There was still a degree of disapproval around novels in the late eighteenth century, and publishers were nervous about taking financial risks in printing them. For that reason, they often asked readers to pay for copies of the book in advance, a form of early crowdfunding. In return, printers would acknowledge the help they had received by printing a ‘List of Subscribers’ in the first pages of the book.
So, who paid for the publication of Camilla? Well, among the others, one name leaps out. Towards the end of the list of subscribers with surnames beginning with ‘A’, we find a certain ‘Miss J. Austen, Steventon’. What makes this simple entry in the 1796 edition of Camilla historically significant is that it marks the very first appearance of Jane Austen’s name in print. We can easily imagine what a boost it must have given the young writer, then only twenty years old and unpublished, to see her name ensconced between those of the great and the good. It can surely only have sharpened her ambition to follow in Burney’s footsteps and see her own work published, something she would only achieve fifteen year later in 1811.
On International Women’s Day this Sunday, let us remember two pioneering women of the past, Frances Burney and Jane Austen, and salute the example they set in encouraging women to tell their stories and in their authentic voices.
Dr Simon McKeown
Keeper of Rare Books and Head of History of Art.
