Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/87

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"I not let Martha read First Impressions again, upon any account," wrote Jane Austen to her sister from Bath, in 1799, "and am very glad that I did not leave it in your power. She is very cunning, but I saw through her design; she means to publish it from memory, and one more perusal would enable her to do it." This is the first mention we have by Jane herself of the work afterwards known as Pride and Prejudice, which, evidently, Martha Lloyd had the good taste to admire greatly, though it had been scornfully rejected by Mr. Cadell two years earlier. In spite of her friend's admiration, Jane had not the courage to try its fate again till after Sense and Sensibility had made its successful appearance in 1811. In 1813, however, it appeared under its new and certainly better title, and Jane's letters at the time are full of the unaffected interest which she always displayed in her own writings, mixed with her usual keen criticism. "I feel that I must write to you to-day," she tells Cassandra in a letter written from Chawton on January 29th, 1813; "I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child from London. On Wednesday I received one copy sent down by Falkener, with three lines from Henry to say that he had given another to Charles, and sent a third by the coach to Godmersham.