We thought this link was so important we promoted it from Linkapalooza–it deserves its own post!
A website has been set up to provide digital versions of Jane Austen’s surviving manuscripts. The digitized items include Volume the First, Volume the Second, Volume the Third, Lady Susan, both extant versions of The Watsons, the “cancelled chapters” of Persuasion, Sanditon, and what they are calling “Notes” and “Opinions.”
We own facsimile editions of several of the manuscripts–the “cancelled chapters” was a gift, and we bought The History of England and Sanditon for ourself. They are so much fun to pore over (and sometimes not the easiest thing in the world to read). The draft manuscripts in particular are really interesting, because one can really see the way Austen worked and created her prose.
Do check out this site, it’s marvelous!
AustenBlog 
This is one of those websites where you can waste so much time reading fun things! I wasted at least an hour reading Volume the First, with the early “novels” … So fun, and I can totally imagine a teenage Jane writing these things to make her family giggle in the drawing room in the evenings. In fact, I wrote a few similar things when I was in my teens, but not of Jane Austen’s quality, of course! Doggerel verse, a “fairy tale”, that sort of thing, not at all trying to be “serious” or produce “good” writing, but it turns out to be clever and funny.
LikeLike