Rare Jane Austen Manuscript to Be Auctioned

A rare, handwritten manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons is to be sold at auction at Sotheby's in London.

From a story in the Guardian...

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's senior specialist in books and manuscripts, said it was "a thrill and privilege" to be selling it: "It is very exciting. This is the most significant Austen material to come on the market since the late 1980s."

It is unquestionably rare. Original manuscripts of her published novels do not exist, aside from two cancelled chapters of Persuasion in the British Library.

The novel is considered around a quarter completed and the manuscript has 68 pages – hand-trimmed by Austen – which have been split up into 11 booklets.

It is most but not all of Austen's unfinished novel. The first 12 pages were sold by an Austen descendent during the first world war to help the Red Cross and are now in New York's Pierpoint Morgan Library, while the next few pages were inexplicably lost by Queen Mary, University of London which has been looking after the manuscript.