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 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.
Jane Austen began work on an untitled novel about 1803, while she was living in Bath, 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 .
The original manuscript covered eighty pages, now divided between the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. On Jane Austen's death the manuscript was inherited by her sister Cassandra, 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. [1]
The timeframe of the completed fragment covers about a fortnight, and serves to introduce the main characters, who live in Surrey. 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 has 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 of the parish church near Osborne Castle. A few days later Margaret returns home, having been away on a protracted visit to her brother Robert in Croydon. 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 [the dowager] Lady Osborne's love for Mr Howard, and his counter affection for Emma, whom he was finally to marry. [2]
In a talk at the Bodleian Library 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. [3]
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". [4] 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 , 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. [5]
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 niece Catherine Hubback adapted the plot into a three-volume novel under the title The Younger Sister. [6] 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. [7] [8] 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." [9]
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.". [10] With these clues, the reader is guided to expect a pastiche of an Austen novel, a Regency era 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. [11] 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". [12] A contemporary reviewer for The Spectator 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". [13]
Another family response followed five years later with the publication of The Watsons, by Jane Austen. Completed in accordance with her intentions by Edith, the granddaughter of Catherine Hubback, and her husband Francis Brown. [14] 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. [15] 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. [16] 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". [17] 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, Here Today (1949), featuring a man who claimed to have wooed Jane Austen. [18] His The Watsons: Jane Austen's fragment continued and completed appeared from British and American publishers in 1958. [19] 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 [Ms] Oulton'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 [is] probably much lighter and cheerier than Austen had originally intended the book to turn out". [20]
Since then, as part of the burgeoning new genre of "Austenesque fiction", [21] Joan Aiken has written sequels to several Jane Austen novels, among them her Emma Watson: The Watsons Completed (1996). [22] New continuations also include The Watsons by Merryn Williams in 2005; [23] the self-published The Watsons, by Jane Austen and Another Lady by Helen Baker in 2008; [24] the religiously-themed The Watsons Revisited by Eucharista Ward in 2012; [25] and The Watsons by Jane Austen, completed by Jennifer Bettiol in 2012. [26] Yet another continuation was written by Irish author Rose Servitova, whose earlier The Longbourn Letters (2017) had been based on the world of Pride and Prejudice. [27] Her new work, A Completing of The Watsons (2019), won the Bronze prize in the Self-Publishing Review Book Awards. [28]
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". [29] Its sequel, Brinshore (2015), is set two decades later and brings together characters and situations from both The Watsons and Sanditon . [30]
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. [31]
In another adaptation (that reverses the direction of the time-travel) a metatheatrical intrusion from the present day occurs in Laura Wade's play The Watsons , a dramatisation of the unfinished novel. It has Laura, the dramatist, (played by an actor) walking onstage as the original, naturalistic story breaks off. [32] There then follows a protracted discussion between the dramatist and the rebellious characters about how the plot should continue. [33]
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
Pride and Prejudice is the second novel by English author Jane Austen, published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Northanger Abbey is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by the English author Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey was completed in 1803, the first of Austen's novels completed in full, but was published posthumously in 1817 with Persuasion, although the title page is dated 1818. The story concerns Catherine Morland, the naïve young protagonist, and her journey to a better understanding of herself and of the world around her. How Catherine views the world has been distorted by her fondness for Gothic novels and an active imagination.
Emma is a novel written by English author Jane Austen. It is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. The novel was first published in December 1815, although the title page is dated 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners.
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-March 1817, probably because of illness. R.W. Chapman first published a full transcription of the novel in 1925 under the name Fragment of a Novel.
Lady Susan is an epistolary novella by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871. This early complete work, which the author never submitted for publication, describes the schemes of the title character.
Mansfield Park is the third published novel by the English author Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen's lifetime. The novel did not receive any public reviews until 1821.
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL was an English novelist and editor of Scottish extraction, known for a post-modern approach to her fiction, often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. She also published under the pseudonym Catherine Aydy.
Catherine Anne Hubback was an English novelist, and the eighth child and fourth daughter of Sir Francis Austen (1774–1865), and niece of English novelist Jane Austen.
The reception history of Jane Austen follows a path from modest fame to wild popularity. Jane Austen (1775–1817), the author of such works as Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), has become one of the best-known and most widely read novelists in the English language. Her novels are the subject of intense scholarly study and the centre of a diverse fan culture.
Anne Elliot is the protagonist of Jane Austen's sixth and last completed novel, Persuasion (1817).
Jane Austen lived her entire life as part of a family located socially and economically on the lower fringes of the English gentry. The Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, Jane Austen's parents, lived in Steventon, Hampshire, where Rev. Austen was the rector of the Anglican parish from 1765 until 1801. Jane Austen's immediate family was large and close-knit. She had six brothers—James, George, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Edward—and a beloved older sister, Cassandra. Austen's brother Edward was adopted by Thomas and Elizabeth Knight and eventually inherited their estates at Godmersham, Kent, and Chawton, Hampshire. In 1801, Rev. Austen retired from the ministry and moved his family to Bath, Somerset. He died in 1805 and for the next four years, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother lived first in rented quarters and then in Southampton where they shared a house with Frank Austen's family. During these unsettled years, they spent much time visiting various branches of the family. In 1809, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved permanently into a large "cottage" in Chawton village that was part of Edward's nearby estate. Austen lived at Chawton until she moved to Winchester for medical treatment shortly before her death in 1817.
The author Jane Austen and her works have been represented in popular culture in a variety of forms.
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. A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives. However, it was the decisions of her sister, Cassandra Austen, to destroy many of Jane's letters after her death that shaped the material available for the biography.
Jane Austen's (1775–1817) distinctive literary style relies on a combination of parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech and a degree of realism. She uses parody and burlesque for comic effect and to critique the portrayal of women in 18th-century sentimental and Gothic novels. Austen extends her critique by highlighting social hypocrisy through irony; she often creates an ironic tone through free indirect speech in which the thoughts and words of the characters mix with the voice of the narrator. The degree to which critics believe Austen's characters have psychological depth informs their views regarding her realism. While some scholars argue that Austen falls into a tradition of realism because of her finely executed portrayal of individual characters and her emphasis on "the everyday", others contend that her characters lack a depth of feeling compared with earlier works, and that this, combined with Austen's polemical tone, places her outside the realist tradition.
Jane Austen fan fiction is the collection of numerous sequels and spin-offs produced by authors who have either used the plot of Austen's original novels, or have extended them, to produce new works of fiction. Austen's posthumous popularity has inspired fan fiction that runs the gamut through numerous genres, but the most concentrated medium has remained the novel. According to Pucci and Thompson in their 2003 survey on the contemporary evolution of Jane Austen's work, at the turn of the 20th century, over one hundred sequels, rewritings, and continuations of her novels had been published.
Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters is a short satirical work by Jane Austen, probably written in May 1816. It was published in complete form for the first time by R. W. Chapman in 1926, extracts having appeared in 1871. It has been said that "in the Plan and the correspondence from which it arose, we have the most important account of what Jane Austen understood to be her aims and capacities as a novelist".
Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (1913) is a novel by Sybil G. Brinton that is often acknowledged to be the first sequel to the works of Jane Austen and as such is possibly the first piece of published Austen fan fiction, although earlier examples have been described by Sarah Glosson. It incorporates characters from each of Austen's six major novels into one unified story, alongside characters of Brinton's own invention. Keeping to the spirit of the source novels, its major theme is the difficulties faced by assorted pairs of lovers placed within the class structure of early 19th century Britain.
Edith Charlotte Brown, néeHubback, also known as Mrs Francis Brown, was an English writer whose works were connected to Jane Austen, her great-great-aunt.
Anna Austen Lefroy was the niece of Jane Austen by her eldest brother James Austen, and a contributor to her life-history via the so-called Lefroy MS.
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