The Watsons

The Watsons is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced why she did not complete it and other authors have since attempted that task. Even before the manuscript fragment was eventually published in 1871, a continuation based on it by Austen's niece appeared in 1850. 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. (wikipedia.org)