Rare Jane Austen manuscript brings $1.6m at auction
- July 18, 2011 14:22
English novelist Jane Austen’s unpublished manuscript for “The Watsons,” a story about four daughters of a widowed clergyman who endeavor to marry well, fetched a stunning £993,250 ($1.6 million) at a Sotheby's auction in London.
The selling price (with fees) for the 68-page document was three times its presale high estimate of 300,000 pounds at hammer prices.
The buyer was later identified as Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.
Austen never finished "The Watsons" which she penned in 1804, showing a bevy of revisions.
The first twelve pages belong to the Morgan Library in New York.
