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
Reception history of Jane Austen regard, MacIntyre used Austen as an "Aristotelian" writer whose books offered up examples of how to be virtuous, with the English country estate playing the same role that the "polis" did for Aristotle. By contrast, Mary Evans in her 1987 book "Jane Austen and the State" depicted Austen as a proto-Marxist concerned with the "stability of human relationships and communities" and against "conspicuous consumption" and the "individualisation of feeling" promoted by the Industrial Revolution. In her 1987 book "Desire and Domestic Fiction", Nancy Armstrong, in a study much influenced by the theories of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault, argued that