This book was not published until after her death, when it appeared in one volume with _Northanger Abbey_, the first to which her name was prefixed, this came out in 1818 with a Memoir by her brother Henry. Up to the time of her death she had received nearly seven hundred pounds for the published books, which, considering her anonymity, and entire lack of publicity and influence, must have appeared to her, and indeed was, wonderful, though in comparison with the true value of the work very little indeed. In December 1816 her brothers, Henry and Charles, were both at Chawton, and she speaks of their being in good health and spirits. She got through the winter well, and wrote to a friend in January, “Such mild weather is, you know, delightful to us, and though we have a great many ponds and a fine running stream through the meadows on the other side of the road, it is nothing but what beautifies us and does to talk of. I have certainly gained strength through the winter, and am not far from being well. And I think I understand my own case now so much better than I did, as to be able by care to keep off any serious return of illness.” She had taken to using a donkey-carriage in good weather, and doubtless this was a great boon, though she was able to walk one way either to or from Alton without over-fatigue, and hoped to be able to manage both ways when the summer came. In January also she mentions that her brother Henry, who was now ordained, was coming down to preach. “It will be a nervous hour for our pew, though we hear that he acquits himself with as much ease and collectedness as if he had been used to it all his life.” Her last completed book _Persuasion_ was not her last work, even in declining strength the motive power was unabated. “Upon a fitful revival of her strength, at the beginning of 1817, she fell eagerly to work at a story, of which she wrote twelve chapters. It has no name, and the plot and purpose are undeveloped. But some of the personages sketched have more than promise. There is a Mr. Parker with fixed theories as to the fashionable watering place he hopes to evolve out of a Sussex fishing village; there is a rich and vulgar Lady Denham, who will certainly disappoint her relatives by the testamentary disposition of her property, and there are two maiden ladies who thoroughly ‘enjoy’ bad health, and quack themselves to their heart’s content. Whatever the plot to be unravelled, there is no sign that the writer’s hand had lost its cunning.” (Mr. Austin Dobson’s preface to Macmillan’s edition of _Northanger Abbey_.) We are told by Mr. Austen-Leigh that the date on the last chapter of this MS. was March 17, which, “as the watch of a drowned man denotes the time of his death, so does this final date seem to fix the period when her mind could no longer pursue its accustomed course.”