Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan was first published in 1871.
Austen probably wrote the epistolary work in the 1790s, often dated around 1794–95, but she never published it during her lifetime. The story follows the calculating widow Lady Susan Vernon through a series of letters describing her social manoeuvres, flirtations, and plans for her daughter Frederica.
The first printing appeared posthumously in the second edition of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen, issued in London by Richard Bentley and Son. It was published alongside fragments and other material connected with Austen’s work, more than half a century after the author’s death.
The date is therefore easy to confuse with the period when the novella was written. It is not an 1810s publication like several of Austen’s major novels, nor was it first issued in 1870, the year before the relevant second edition.