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''The Watsons'' is an abandoned novel by
Bodleian_Library_
The_Bodleian_Library_()_is_the_main__research_library_of_the__University_of_Oxford,_and_is_one_of_the_oldest_libraries_in__Europe._It_derives_its_name_from_its_founder,_Sir__Thomas_Bodley._With_over_13 million_printed_items,_it_is_the_sec_...
''The Watsons'' is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen
Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen's niece was published in 1850. The manuscript fragment itself was published in 1871. Further completions and adaptations of the story have continued to the present day.
History
Jane Austen began work on an untitled novel about 1803, while she was living inBath
Bath may refer to:
* Bathing, immersion in a fluid
** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body
** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe
* Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities
Pl ...
, and probably abandoned it after her father's death in January 1805. It had no formal chapter divisions and was approximately 7,500 words long. The fragment was given the title of ''The Watsons'' and published in 1871 by the novelist's nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874), in the revised and augmented edition of his ''A Memoir of Jane Austen
''A Memoir of Jane Austen'' is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings. ...
''.
The original manuscript covered eighty pages, now divided between the Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
, New York, and the Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...
, Oxford. On Jane Austen's death the manuscript was inherited by her sister Cassandra
Cassandra or Kassandra (; Ancient Greek: Κασσάνδρα, , also , and sometimes referred to as Alexandra) in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be belie ...
, and then passed to other family relations until it was divided up in 1915. The smaller part was later acquired by the Morgan Library in 1925 and the remaining larger portion went through various hands until it was bought by the Bodleian in 2011. There are erasures and corrections to the manuscript and in three cases there were substantial revisions written on small pieces of paper and pinned in place over the cancelled portions.
Synopsis
The timeframe of the completed fragment covers about a fortnight, and serves to introduce the main characters. Mr Watson is a widowed and ailing clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, the heroine of the story, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more refined than her sisters. But after her aunt contracted a foolish second marriage, Emma has been obliged to return to her father's house. There she is chagrined by the crude and reckless husband-hunting of two of her sisters, Penelope and Margaret. One particular focus for them is Tom Musgrave, who had paid attention to all of the sisters in the past. This Emma learns from her more responsible and kindly eldest sister Elizabeth. Living near the Watsons are the Osbornes, a great titled family. Emma attracts some notice from the young and awkward Lord Osborne while attending a ball in the nearby town. An act of kindness on her part also acquaints her with Mrs Blake, who introduces Emma to her brother, Mr Howard, vicar to the parish church near Osborne Castle. A few days later Margaret returns home, having been away on a protracted visit to her brother Robert inCroydon
Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an exten ...
. With her come her brother and his overbearing and snobbish wife. When they leave, Emma declines an invitation to accompany them back.
Here the story breaks off, but Edward Austen-Leigh's ''Memoir'' provides a hint of how it was to continue:
When the author's sister, Cassandra, showed the manuscript of this work to some of her nieces, she also told them something of the intended story; for with this dear sister – though, I believe, with no one else – Jane seems to have talked freely of any work that she might have in hand. Mr Watson was soon to die; and Emma to become dependent for a home on her narrow-minded sister-in-law and brother. She was to decline an offer of marriage from Lord Osborne, and much of the interest of the tale was to arise from he_dowager.html"_;"title="dowager.html"_;"title="he_dowager">he_dowager">dowager.html"_;"title="he_dowager">he_dowagerLady_Osborne's_love_for_Mr_Howard,_and_his_counter_affection_for_Emma,_whom_he_was_finally_to_marry.
_Critical_commentary
In_a_talk_at_the_Critical commentary
In a talk at theBodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...
following the acquisition of its part of the manuscript, Professor Kathryn Sutherland described the novel as being about one sixth of the length of Austen's published novels and as marking a turning point in her writing. Here she leaves behind her parodies of earlier authors for a more naturalistic plot. "The Watsons is an experiment in turning fiction into life and life into fiction" and a "repository of classic Austen ingredients". The latter includes particularly the theme of being an outsider within the family and the consequent search for belonging. The talk also raised the possibility that Austen's fragment might really have been meant as a novella.
That final point takes up an earlier claim that the work was nearer completion than assumed in that it "comprises the complete history of the heroine's movement from a position of social exclusion to one of inclusion". Such an argument, however, was merely one more addition to the many theories as to why Jane Austen had never completed the fragment. An earlier article by Joseph Wiesenfarth disagreed with the speculation that the novel was unfinished because of the unhappy associations for the author of the time it was written and that it covered a theme too close to her own circumstances. Furthermore, in reviewing the theory that the plot had been rewritten as ''Emma (novel)">Emma'', Wiesenfarth advanced the counter-argument that ''The Watsons'' was "a pre-text – a text that comes before other texts". He felt that situations first foreshadowed there were eventually reworked with more skill in novels that Austen had already begun, such as ''Pride and Prejudice'', or would write later, so that "it would be redundant to use them again in a completed version" of ''The Watsons''.
Continuations
Dissatisfaction that the fragment's promising beginning was not brought to fulfilment eventually resulted in attempts to finish the novel. Some of the earliest of these were authored by descendants of the Austen family itself. In 1850, Jane's nieceCatherine Hubback
Catherine Anne Hubback (7 July 1818 – 25 February 1877) was an English novelist, and the eighth child and fourth daughter of Sir Francis Austen (1774–1865), and niece of English novelist Jane Austen.
She began writing fiction to support ...
adapted the plot into a three-volume novel under the title ''The Younger Sister''. The initial chapters were based on Jane's fragmentary story, which was known to family members but had not yet been published. The writing, however, was not word for word from the manuscript and in the development of the story some names were changed and new characters and episodes introduced, as well as long moralising passages and a good deal of descriptive detail. The continuation is recognisably Victorian in its themes and attitudes to social class. Possibly the new focus on the economics of the penniless heroine's situation could not have been adequately treated until this later date. In the opinion of Jane Austen's great-nephew, William Austen-Leigh (1843–1921), his aunt may have become aware of the difficulty "of having placed her heroine too low, in a position of poverty and obscurity…and therefore, like a singer who has begun on too low a note, she discontinued the strain."
Mrs Hubback's novel differs importantly from later continuations of ''The Watsons'', in that it was not presented as a continuation when it appeared in 1850. That fact would not become apparent until Jane Austen's earlier fragment was first published in 1871, although Mrs Hubback's relationship with her is made clear by the dedication at the start: "To the memory of her aunt, the late Jane Austen, this work is affectionately inscribed by the authoress who, though too young to have known her personally, was from childhood taught to esteem her virtues, and admire her talents." Moreover, it is not until the opening paragraphs of Chapter 2, following a digression on the style of ball-dresses over the centuries, that Mrs Hubback announces the period in which her novel is set. It is "sixty years ago", at which time "the liveliest fancy would have never pictured an English ball such as we now see it.". With these clues, the reader is guided to expect a pastiche of an Austen novel, a Regency era
The Regency era of British history officially spanned the years 1811 to 1820, though the term is commonly applied to the longer period between and 1837. King George III succumbed to mental illness in late 1810 and, by the Regency Act 1811, ...
situation described from the point of view of mid-Victorian times.
No more continuations of ''The Watsons'' appeared until some fifty years after Austen-Leigh had published Jane Austen's manuscript. Then came ''The Watsons – A Fragment by Jane Austen & Concluded by L. Oulton'', published in 1923 and prefaced by Austen-Leigh's original introduction of 1871, as if to give it authenticity. The American edition went further in suggesting that the continuation had family sanction by claiming that Miss Oulton "has carried out her task so successfully that the reader will share with the members of the Austen family, to whom she showed her work, an inability to recognize the place where she took up the story from her distinguished predecessor". A contemporary reviewer for ''The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...
'' certainly noticed, however, commenting that "soon after she has taken up the tale, we become aware that all the rich reality has faded out of it and from being, as it were, a perfect little Dresden group, it has shrunk to a two-dimensional drawing", for all that the author "is often successful in hitting off Miss Austen's style and intonation".
Another family response followed five years later with the publication of ''The Watsons, by Jane Austen. Completed in accordance with her intentions'' by Edith
Edith is a feminine given name derived from the Old English words ēad, meaning 'riches or blessed', and is in common usage in this form in English, German, many Scandinavian languages and Dutch. Its French form is Édith. Contractions and var ...
, the granddaughter of Catherine Hubback, and her husband Francis Brown. The aim, according to the book's introduction, had been to "disentangle Jane's story from that of her niece", although a dependence on ''The Younger Sister'' remained. Mrs Hubback's novel was quarried yet again in 1977 by David Hopkinson (1914–2002), the husband of Diana Hubback – a niece of Edith Brown. This relationship was coyly concealed on publication under the title ''The Watsons by Jane Austen and Another''. A postscript surveyed the history of the family continuations and criticised the Brown version which "so greatly compressed the plot's development that it did less than justice to Jane's own work when all it yielded was so perfunctory a conclusion". Nevertheless, believing that Catherine Hubback had absorbed from family members "an accurate picture of the author's intentions", he too kept his version close to Catherine's original wording and incorporated all of Jane Austen's fragment at its start. What are curtailed are all the digressions that Mrs Hubback had added to give her novel context and the subplots that maintained its momentum.
A further continuation came from John Coates (1912–1963), a writer with no family connection but who had earlier written a time-travel novel
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...
, ''Here Today'' (1949), featuring a man who claimed to have wooed Jane Austen. His ''The Watsons: Jane Austen's fragment continued and completed'' appeared from British and American publishers in 1958. In his postscript (pages 314–18) he admitted to having rewritten the original fragment in order to develop the characters differently, including renaming Emma Watson as Emily. He also pointed out that the tempo of Jane Austen's contribution had been "leisurely…It is the start of a long book, not of a short one. Yet it comprises a half of sOulton's book and almost half of the Browns' book." In his own book that proportion is reduced to less than a quarter of the total length. As a result of giving himself this extra leg-room, his version of the story has been judged "more successful in capturing the feel of early 19th-century society than many of the other sequels, but sprobably much lighter and cheerier than Austen had originally intended the book to turn out".
Since then, as part of the burgeoning new genre of "Austenesque fiction", Joan Aiken
Joan Delano Aiken (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was an English writer specialising in supernatural fiction and children's alternative history novels. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature. For ''The ...
has written sequels to several Jane Austen novels, among them her ''Emma Watson: The Watsons Completed'' (1996). New continuations also include ''The Watsons'' by Merryn Williams in 2005; the self-published ''The Watsons, by Jane Austen and Another Lady'' by Helen Baker in 2008; the religiously-themed ''The Watsons Revisited'' by Eucharista Ward in 2012; and ''The Watsons by Jane Austen, completed by Jennifer Ready Bettiol'' of the Jane Austen Society of North America in 2012. Yet another continuation was written by Irish author Rose Servitova, whose earlier ''The Longbourn Letters'' (2017) had been dependent on the world of ''Pride and Prejudice''. Her new work, ''A Completing of The Watsons'' (2019), won the Bronze prize in the Self-Publishing Review
''Skdoit'' is an online book review magazine for indie authors founded in 2008 by American author Henry Baum.
Overview
''Self-Publishing Review'' is a daily online report of indie book reviews, articles, and news related to the self-publishin ...
Book Awards.
Adaptations
As well as continuations of the original novel, a number of other authors have contributed new novels, and adaptations in other formats. Among these are the two 'Watsons novels' described as "inspired by Jane Austen" and written by Ann Mychal. The first, ''Emma and Elizabeth'' (2014), according to its back cover, "blends passages from the original fragment into the narrative, creating a unique story which is faithful to Jane Austen's style and subject matter". Its sequel, ''Brinshore'' (2015), is set two decades later and brings together characters and situations from both ''The Watsons'' and ''Sanditon
''Sanditon'' (1817) is an unfinished novel by the English writer Jane Austen. In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel she called ''The Brothers'', later titled ''Sanditon'', and completed eleven chapters before stopping work in mid-M ...
''.
In ''The Jane Austen Project'' (2017) by Kathleen A. Flynn, the manuscript of the novel is made the subject of a time-travel quest. Austen is supposed there to have completed ''The Watsons'' but then destroyed it, so two researchers from the future travel back to her time in an attempt to retrieve it.
In another adaptation that inverts the direction of time-travel, a metatheatrical Metatheatre, and the closely related term metadrama, describes the aspects of a play that draw attention to its nature as drama or theatre, or to the circumstances of its performance. "Breaking the Fourth Wall" is an example of a metatheatrical dev ...
intrusion from the present day occurs in Laura Wade
Laura Wade is an English playwright.
Early life
Wade was born in Bedford, Bedfordshire. She grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where her father worked for a computer company. After completing her secondary education at Lady Manners School i ...
's play ''The Watsons
''The Watsons'' is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen's niece ...
'', a dramatisation of the unfinished novel. It has Laura, the dramatist, (played by an actor) walking onstage as the original, naturalistic story breaks off. There then follows a protracted discussion between the dramatist and the rebellious characters about how the plot should continue. The work was first staged at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester
The Minerva Theatre is a studio theatre seating, at full capacity, 310. It is run as part of the adjacent Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, and was opened in 1989.List of most expensive books and manuscripts
Jane Austen Information Page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Watsons, The Novels by Jane Austen Unfinished novels Unfinished literature completed by others Novels set in Surrey Novels about nobility Novels published posthumously
References
Further reading
*External links
Jane Austen Information Page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Watsons, The Novels by Jane Austen Unfinished novels Unfinished literature completed by others Novels set in Surrey Novels about nobility Novels published posthumously