Works deemed to fit the canon of greatness evoke the desire to peer into the creative process of the author who produced them. Manuscripts are revered as proofs and relics of that process and scrutinized accordingly: type of paper used, type of writing instrument and ink employed and most importantly crossings-out, corrections, additions at the margins. Draft novels are indications of the way the author thought and worked. It comes as no surprise that in July 14, 2011 a Jane Austen manuscript entitled The Watsons fetched nearly £1 million pounds at a Sotheby’s auction in London.
A Very Expensive Draft
The high price Jane Austin’s unfinished novel reached at Sotheby’s is, in a way, justified. Only a few of Austen’s draft works survive, among which are two draft chapters of Persuasion, Lady Susan and Sanditon. The Watsons was the last fiction manuscript in private ownership, says Dr Chris Fletcher, “and it’s worth every penny.” It is also particularly important because it is a “working draft” and, as Virginia Woolf once said, it is very rare to catch Jane Austen in the act of greatness.
In an effort to keep the rare manuscript in Britain, money was raised through a £894,700 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and donations from Friends of the National Libraries, Friends of the Bodleian and the Jane Austen Memorial Trust. As a result this very expensive draft and priceless manuscript will stay in the UK and be kept in the Bodleian Libraries. But what makes Jane Austen's manuscripts so important to the researcher?
What the Manuscripts Say
In an interview she gave to the BBC on 23 October 2010, Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English at Oxford University, talked about the importance of manuscripts in revealing “the author’s writing hand.” Catching Jane Austen “in the act of greatness,” reveals an unpolished prose – a poor copy, as her editor used to complain – because Jane Austen “achieved her results largely through conversation.”
Austen is “transcribing speech”, Professor Sutherland says. “She’s transcribing conversation whereas what happens in print is that her manuscript is turned into grammatically ordered structure.” She is the first British author to “attempt to produce conversation as it really is, with voices spilling across each other, speaking non-grammatically as we do, pausing for rhetorical emphasis rather than for printed the page.” This type of conversation does not take place in fiction writing until much later with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
The Watsons takes place in 1804 and tells the story of a young woman who returns to her father's home which has been bought up by a wealthy aunt. The novel can be read for free online but the manuscript with all its crossings-out and re-writes is the original version of The Watsons. As such it will provide more insights into Jane Austen’s creative process.
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
