Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts

jane austens fiction manuscripts book cover

Kathryn Sutherland presents an edition of the fiction manuscripts of Jane Austen (1775-1817) in this five-volume set. Scholars have pored over this much-loved novelist for decades, yet there are still more riches to be uncovered by the careful presentation of the texts in this fully annotated new edition. Jane Austen's fiction manuscripts are the first substantial collection of autograph writings to survive for a British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing life, from childhood—aged 11 or 12—to the year of her death. The manuscripts represent a wide variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. Where the juvenile, handwritten notebooks have long appeared to scholars to be finished artefacts, most of the other manuscript writings consist of pre-print or working drafts in various stages of development.

The edition presents full transcriptions of the texts based on a fresh examination of all the extant witnesses in Austen's hand, with facing facsimile images of the manuscript pages, and commentary on revisions, over-writings, erasures, and other features of the manuscripts.

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