Jane Austen’s Unfinished Novel Manuscript Sold

The Watsons, an unfinished novel by Jane Austen has been sold to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library by the Sotheby's auction house for nearly £1million.

The English novelist reportedly began writing the novel in 1803 but left it incomplete because of her personal tragedy.

The manuscript of The Watsons has five chapters and less than 18,000 words.

The novel is believed to be the most autobiographical of author’s novels, as according to experts, Mr. Watson, a clergyman, was going to die in the story, and Austen stopped writing it in 1805 after her father, who was also a clergyman, died.

Truly depicting Austen writing style, the novel portrays Emma, the protagonist and the youngest daughter in the Watsons family, as an educated girl of the early nineteenth century.

Like Austen’s other protagonists from her novels such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), Emma of The Watsons speaks her mind.

According to experts, the effect of The Watsons’ story can be seen in most of the after works of Austen as it highlights the hypocrisy of the then England’s society in which, women vied for getting a suitable husband for financial security.