Jane Austen manuscript auctioned for almost £1m

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/14/jane-austen-manuscript-the-watsons


A draft of Jane Austen's novel The Watsons, which was written in about 1804 and sold at Sotheby's for almost £1m. Photograph: Sothebys/EPA

The only remaining privately owned fragment of a Jane Austen novel in the author's own handwriting has sold at auction in London for nearly £1m, three times its estimate.

The heavily corrected manuscript from The Watsons, written in about 1804, was acquired by the Bodleian library at Oxford for £993,250 at Sotheby's. The hammer went down to a round of applause, since the lot had been estimated to reach £200,000-£300,000.

The 68 pages, hand-cut and bound into 11 small booklets by the author, are thought to be a quarter of the original length. A further dozen pages, sold to raise money for the Red Cross during the first world war, are at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and some others were lost from the library of Queen Mary, University of London about six years ago.

None of the original drafts of Austen's completed novels survive, with the exception of discarded chapters of Persuasion and the unpublished Lady Susan.

[CartoonDiablo]

1. Best Mark Twain on Jane Austin quote

"I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone"

[KoKo]

3. Did Twain say that when he was in his older years when he was very cynical?

Otherwise, I can't imagine the trash of her writing. Perhaps he just didn't like women writes at that time in his life? :shrug:

[KoKo]

2. K&R!