Autograph draft of 'The Watsons'

‘The Watsons’ is Jane Austen’s first extant draft of a novel in process of development, and one of the earliest examples of an English novel to survive in its formative state. 

Only seven manuscripts of fiction by Austen are known to survive.  In addition to ‘The Watsons’ and ‘Volume the First’ at the Bodleian, the other manuscripts are at the British Library (two volumes of juvenilia and a fragment of ‘Persuasion’), King’s College, Cambridge (‘Sanditon’) and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (‘Lady Susan’).  A fragment of ‘The Watsons’ also survives at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.