While Jane Austen is celebrated globally as one of literature's most beloved figures, two Scottish contemporaries — Susan Ferrier and Mary Brunton — actually outsold her during their lifetimes yet remain largely unknown today. Both Edinburgh-based authors wrote novels focused on women's lives and Scottish identity, with Brunton's debut Self-Control (1811) outselling Austen's Sense and Sensibility when the two appeared the same year, and Ferrier's Marriage (1818) drawing immediate comparisons to Pride and Prejudice. Their relative obscurity matters because it highlights how the modern literary canon, shaped by 19th-century republication trends, elevated Austen while sidelining equally influential and commercially successful women writers of the Regency era.