[196] _Margiana; or Widdrington Tower_, anon. 5 vols. 1808. For a description of this romance see a reply by M. H. Dodds in _Notes and Queries_, 11 S. vii. pp. 233-4. [197] _Women, or Ida of Athens_, by Sydney Owenson (afterwards Lady Morgan), published in 1809. [198] _The Wild Irish Girl_, published in 1806. [199] Mrs. Charles Austen, whose daughter Cassandra was born on December 22, 1808. [200] Eldest daughter of Jane's brother Edward. [201] This proved to be Hannah More's _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, published in 1808. See next letter. [202] Messrs. Crosby & Co. of Stationers' Hall Court, London. [203] Mr. Austin Dobson, in his introduction to _Northanger Abbey_ (Macmillan, 1897), makes the mistake of saying that the 'advertisement' of the first edition of 1818 tells us that the MS. was disposed of to 'a Bath bookseller.' [204] _Memoir_, p. 129. [205] This implies that (if _Susan_ and _Northanger Abbey_ were the same) no arrangement was concluded in 1809. Indeed, it does not appear that the author contemplated a re-purchase at that time; and the publisher was unwilling to relinquish his rights on any other terms. [206] Later writers have not even been content to accept the 'publisher in Bath,' but have found a name and habitation for him. Mr. Peach, in his _Historic Houses in Bath_, published in 1883 (p. 150 _note_), says: 'The publisher (who purchased _Northanger Abbey_), we believe, was Bull.' Mr. Oscar Fay Adams, writing in 1891 (_Story of Jane Austen's Life_, p. 93), becomes more definite in his statement that 'nothing of hers (Jane Austen's) had yet been published; for although Bull, a publisher in Old Bond Street [sc. in Bath], had purchased in 1802 [_sic_] the manuscript of _Northanger Abbey_ for the sum of ten pounds, it was lying untouched--and possibly unread--among his papers, at the epoch of her leaving Bath.' It is true that Mr. Dobson, unable to find the authority for Bull's name, is a little more guarded, when he amusingly writes, in 1897:-- 'Even at this distance of time, the genuine devotee of Jane Austen must be conscious of a futile but irresistible desire to "feel the bumps" of that Boeotian bookseller of Bath, who, having bought the manuscript of _Northanger Abbey_ for the base price of ten pounds, refrained from putting it before the world. . . . Only two suppositions are possible: one, that Mr. Bull of the Circulating Library at Bath (if Mr. Bull it were) was constitutionally insensible to the charms of that master-spell which Mrs. Slipslop calls "ironing"; the other, that he was an impenitent and irreclaimable adherent of the author of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_.' Mr. Meehan, in his _Famous Houses of Bath and District_ (1901), is the most circumstantial of all, writing on p. 197:--