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Unfinished Austen examines four texts that Jane Austen left incomplete: Catharine, or the Bower (1792–-3), Lady Susan (1795?), The Watsons (1803–-4?) and Sanditon (1817), none of them published till well after her death. Since very little in manuscript form survives from the six famous novels, these four manuscript texts offer insight into the novelist in the process of creation. They also problematize the romance plot prominent in the published novels by presenting this in a nebulous or incipient state that underlines its artificiality.
These texts sometimes show how the romance plot is inflected by the financial condition in which young marriageable women can find themselves. Moreover, the stories (other than Catharine) have aroused the interest of many later writers—including writers for theatre and screen—who are eager to complete or to amplify them. They may do this through developing the stories to some kind of dénouement. Perhaps more intriguingly, however, these texts induce some writers to question the very enterprise of concluding an unfinished text.
Unfinished Austen is an extremely useful work of deep scholarship and insight which will become essential reading for anyone interested in serious study of Austen’s manuscript writings. —European Romantic Review.
Unfinished Austen: Interpreting ‘Catharine,’ Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon puts the four unfinished works center stage. The book considers what close textual analysis can tell us about Austen’s composition and revision practices, examines how these texts stand in relation to one another and the finished novels, and explores the unique opportunities these unfinished works offer as source texts for adaptations and completions— Cheryl A. Wilson, Professor, SUNY Old Westbury
"Joanne Wilkes catches Jane Austen in the act of creation by exploring her revisions in the manuscripts of the juvenilia and other unpublished works. As a group, their unfinished and possibly transitional state encourages many an author to invent endings for them both in print and on-screen, with varied success"— Jocelyn Harris, Professor emerita, Department of English & Linguistics, University of Otago, New Zealand.
Finally, a book that focusses on Jane Austen’s unfinished business! Joanne Wilkes shines a bright light on four tantalizingly unfinished manuscripts from across Austen’s writing career: ‘Catharine, or the Bower’, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon. Deftly, Wilkes weighs their shared incompleteness as well as their divergent afterlives— Janine Barchas, author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen.
Unfinished Austen makes an important scholarly contribution to our understanding of four of Austen's unfinished manuscript texts that span her career. Wilkes helps us consider Austen's writing and revision processes through careful manuscript study and invites us to reevaluate our expectations of a completed fictional narrative— Michael Kramp, Professor of English, Lehigh University
Whether you already know a great deal about Catharine, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon or are coming to them for the first time, you’ll no doubt find that this book offers superb food for thought on lesser-known Austen. - JASNA
Wilkes’ dissection of these four manuscripts offers extraordinary insight into Austen’s creative process. This is a densely written, demanding piece of work – but shines the brightest of lights on a great novelist at work. - Jane Austen’s Regency World
Unfinished Austen uncovers the richness of these unfinished texts and their illumination of the published novels by comparisons which highlight the narrative choices Jane Austen made for the heroines whose stories she gave the world. - Sensibilities
Joanne Wilkes is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and has published especially on nineteenth-century fiction, including Jane Austen.
Introduction; 1. “Catharine, or the Bower”; 2. Lady Susan; 3. The Watsons; 4. Sanditon; 5. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index