During the first few books in Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mystery series, Austen is thinking about and working on a couple of stories that were never published. Lady Susan is a completed novella that she just never submitted for publication, but she never even finished writing The Watsons.
There's some debate about why she abandoned the latter book, but the theory I like best (and Barron seems to adopt it, too) is that after the death of Austen's father, she lost her passion for writing. She started The Watsons just before her father's death and continuing it would likely have been a rough reminder of that time.
She would eventually get that passion back, but there's a chunk of time in which she's not writing (though the mysteries keep coming in the world of Barron's series). When Austen eventually did write again, it was to work on a new novel that became Sense and Sensibility.
In the timeline of Barron's series, Austen's father died shortly after the events of Jane and the Wandering Eye. In Genius of the Place, she's still feeling the loss. So it seemed appropriate to me to read Lady Susan and what exists of The Watsons after Genius of the Place and before continuing with Barron's stories. (Collections also include her unfinished Sanditon, but that's the book she was working on when she died, so it'll be a while before I get to that one.)
Lady Susan is delightful. It's the story of a scheming widow who's not quite done getting everything she can from her deceased husband's wealthy family. It's told in a series of letters between the various characters, which is an approach that doesn't always keep me engaged when some writers use it. But I enjoyed it very much as a change from Austen's usual style and she brings a lot of humor out of it as she shows the characters' wildly different points of view alongside each other.
It was adapted as a movie called Love & Friendship in 2016, starring Kate Beckinsale as the crafty Lady Susan, so I'll talk about that next post.
The Watsons had a lot of promise and it's too bad Austen never went back to it. What we have needs polishing and doesn't compare well with her finished works, but the dramatic seeds are all strong. It's the story of a young woman named Emma who's trying to reintegrate with her family after spending significant time away from them. (When Barron has Austen thinking about Emma in the early mystery books, I mistakenly assumed that she was working on the novel Emma featuring the character Emma Woodhouse, but the Emma in The Watsons is entirely different.)
All we really have of the story is the introductions of Emma and her family and some potential romantic interests. Austen's niece took a shot at finishing it in 1850 and other writers have given it their own spins through the years, but so little of Austen's own work on it exists - and we know so little about her plans for the story - that I'm not interested in seeing other writers build their own things out what's essentially nothing more than a story prompt by Austen.
