JANE Austen lovers have a special reason to visit her Hampshire home this week.
The Jane Austen Museum in Chawton in the South Downs National Park will be displaying a booklet from The Watsons, an unfinished novel by the author, from September 18.
She abandoned writing the book, which would have focused on the harsh circumstances of women’s lives, between 1804 and 1805 after the sudden death of her father.
Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English at the University of Oxford and trustee at Jane Austen’s House Museum, said: “Jane Austen’s art is famously frugal. The densely filled and patched small pages of The Watsons’ manuscript offer us a precious insight into that rich and mysterious frugality.
“This is a rare opportunity to glimpse Jane Austen at work and her fiction as she created it.”
A needle-case is included in the display, drawing attention to Austen’s skill as a needlewoman as well as a writer.
For more details visit jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk.
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