Spotlight on The Watsons Documentary Explores Jane Austen's Abandoned Novel
A still from the documentary film about The Watsons
Jane Austen’s House will premiere a mini-documentary Spotlight on The Watsons on YouTube later this week.
Jane Austen started writing The Watsons around 1803 and probably stopped working on it after her father died in January 1805. It was untitled but the fragment was published in 1871 under the title of The Watsons, by Austen's nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh.
The 80-page manuscript was inherited by Austen's sister Cassandra and stayed within the family until 1915 when it was divided up. A small section is now held by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York and the remaining 68 pages by the Bodleian Library in Oxford which bought it in 2011 at auction for for £993,250 at Sotheby's.
The documentary, which was filmed in the Bodleian, examines the manuscript itself as well as offering insights into Jane Austen’s creative process and is presented by Professor Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism at the University of Oxford, and Andrew Honey, Book Conservator at the Bodleian Libraries. It will be available to view on YouTube from November 28 at 8pm GMT.
