Skip to content

Cart

Your cart is empty

Article: The Bank of England Reveals Jane Austen's Income

income

The Bank of England Reveals Jane Austen's Income

What was Jane Austen's income? A fair price for her genius?

Jane Austen's billet

 According to documents published by the Bank of England Jane Austen’s third published novel, Mansfield Park made Jane just £310, or £22000 in today’s money. That doesn't sound like a lot, and it wasn't. For comparison, Maria Edgeworth, a writer who was very popular in Jane's time, received £2,100 for her novel Patronage.

Mansfield Park may not be the most popular of Jane's novels now (it was very well received in its time and sold out it's first print run in under six months), but at least we've heard of it. Not many have heard of Patronage, yet it was that much better in terms of author profits. The investigative research conducted using the Bank of England's archive showed that Jane would have made £575 after tax, which would be equivalent to just over £45,000 at today’s rates.

In their piece about the research, the Financial Times noted that, even compared to those making their living as full-time adult fiction writers in the U.K. today, Austen’s earnings were pretty small: the average income for full-time fiction writers is £37,000 a year. The research was conducted by John Avery Jones, who is the first of an occasional series external researchers who will be using the Bank of England’s archives for their work on subjects outside traditional central banking topics. The full article is well worth a read and can be found here.


Leave a comment

This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

All comments are moderated before being published.

Read more

An Evening of Emma in Fort George - JaneAusten.co.uk
Emma

An Evening of Emma in Fort George

An Evening of Emma in Fort George At the Jane Austen News we love hearing about celebrations of Jane that happen all around the world. Because as much as we might wish all of Jane's fans could com...

Read more
Interviewing The Cast of Sanditon - JaneAusten.co.uk
Andrew Davies

Interviewing The Cast of Sanditon

As the date of the airing of the first episode of Sanditon draws ever nearer (Sunday 25th August, at 9pm on ITV) the cast of Sanditon and the director of the new series have been doing a series of ...

Read more