Jane Austen Manuscript of The Watson's sells for $1.6 Million

Our friends across The Pond can heave a sigh of relief. Jane Austen's original manuscript of The Watsons has sold for over an astounding £990,000 although it was valued for no more than £300,000. The Bodleian Library in Oxford has purchased this rare item, the only surviving original manuscript of any of Jane Austen's novels.

The manuscript descended from Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra to her niece Caroline Mary Craven Austen (1805-1880), the younger daughter of their eldest brother James. It was in Caroline’s possession when first published in 1871 by her brother James Edward Austen-Leigh.- About the Watsons

The draft of this unfinished novel is not complete. The Morgan Library in New York City owns 12 pages of the manuscript. A few of its pages were lost by The University of London. The manuscript is remarkable in that it is a working draft, with crossings out, ink splotches, and many changes inserted into the lines and spacings.

"Richard Ovenden, Deputy Librarian, Bodleian Libraries said: ‘The Bodleian Libraries are delighted to have succeeded in their bid to save Jane Austen’s draft manuscript of the The Watsons for the nation. The manuscript is such a valuable part of our literary heritage and we are glad it will stay now in Britain. We will make the manuscript available to the general public who can come and see it as early as this autumn when The Watsons will indeed be a star item in our forthcoming exhibition Treasures of the Bodleian." - Saved for the Nation: Bodleian Acquires Jane Austen Manuscript

Much of the money to purchase The Watsons came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), through a £894,700 grant.Other contributors include the Friends of the National Libraries, the Friends of the Bodleian and the Jane Austen Memorial Trust.

• Saved for the Nation: Bodleian Acquires Jane Austen Manuscript
• The £1m 'lost' Austen: Sold at auction, manuscript that comes with no beginning or end
  
• Jane Austen Manuscript Sells for More than 990,000.
• Sotheby's List of Catelogue Items for Sale

Links contributed by Tony Grant, London Calling.

A Copy of The Watsons, a Rare Jane Austen Manuscript, for Sale at Sotheby's

An extremely rare manuscript handwritten by Jane Austen will go on sale at Sotheby's, London on July 14th of this year. The novel

is unquestionably rare. Original manuscripts of her published novels do not exist, aside from two cancelled chapters of Persuasion in the British Library.

The novel is considered around a quarter completed and the manuscript has 68 pages – hand-trimmed by Austen – which have been split up into 11 booklets.

Fragment of the Watsons at the Morgan Library

The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York owns the first 12 pages, which I had the privilege to view last year at A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy exhibit. Click here to see a facsimile of those pages.

The Watsons manuscript shows how Austen's other manuscripts must have looked. It also shines an interesting light on how she worked. Austen took a piece of paper, cut it in two and then folded over each half to make eight-page booklets. Then she would write, small neat handwriting leaving little room for corrections – of which there are many. "You can really see the mind at work with all the corrections and revisions," said Heaton.

Only this manuscript and a couple of canceled chapters of Persuasion in Jane's hand have survived. They show her creative mind at work.

At one stage she crosses so much out that she starts a page again and pins it in. It seems, in Austen's mind, her manuscript had to look like a book. "Writers often fall into two categories," said [Gabriel] Heaton, [Sotheby's senior specialist in books and manuscripts]. "The ones who fall into a moment of great inspiration and that's it and then you have others who endlessly go back and write and tinker. Austen is clearly of the latter variety. It really is a wonderful, evocative document."

• Read more of the Guardian article here.

Harriet Walter Reflects on Jane Austen

The Morgan Library's website features a film by Harriet Walter, who reflects on Jane Austen: "I think one of the reasons people love Jane Austen is that she's quite wicked, but she's not really viciously cruel. She's sympathetic towards the people she's laughing at."

Click here to see the 5-minute video.

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World

Jane Austen Exhibit at the Morgan Library opens Friday

Lucky us on the East Coast! The Morgan Library in New York will be opening A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy from November 6, 2009, through March 14, 2010. Click on this link for schedules and other information.

The online exhibition includes:

Film
The Divine Jane is a short documentary film specially commissioned for the exhibition and examines the influence of Austen's fiction—and her enduring fame—through interviews with leading writers, scholars, and actors.

Lady Susan facsimile
The first seven letters of the manuscript are shown here, accompanied by an audio recording.

Selected images
See selected images from the exhibition with descriptions.

Pride and Prejudice drawing by Isabel Bishop