The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen Read online

  Table of Contents

  How It Began

  The Search

  The Discovery

  The Stanhopes

  Entr’acte I

  Entr’acte II

  Entr’acte III

  Finale

  Plan of a Novel

  Acknowledgments

  Reader's Guide

  Discussion Questions

  “A novel within a novel honoring what we love most about Austen: her engaging stories, her rapier wit, and her swoon-worthy romance…Pitch-perfect, brilliantly crafted.”

  —Austenprose

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SYRIE JAMES

  THE LOST MEMOIRS OF JANE AUSTEN

  “This fascinating novel will make readers swear there was such a man as Mr. Ashford and that there is such a memoir…Tantalizing, tender, and true to the Austen mythos, James’s book is highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “James creates a life story for Austen that illuminates how her themes and plots may have developed…The reader blindly pulls for the heroine and her dreams of love, hoping against history that Austen might yet enjoy the satisfactions of romance.”

  —The Los Angeles Times

  “Austen and Mr. Ashford seem a perfect match in matters of head and heart…Though she hews closely to the historic record, [James] creates…will-they-or-won’t-they suspense that culminates with a proposal and an ‘intensely’ kissed Austen. It’s a pleasant addition to the ever-expanding Austen-revisited genre.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

  “For fans of biographical tales and romance, Syrie’s story of Charlotte offers it all: longing and yearning, struggle and success, the searing pain of immeasurable loss, and the happiness of a love that came unbidden and unsought. I did not want this story to end.”

  —Jane Austen’s World

  “James adapts Brontë’s voice, telling Brontë’s story as though it came straight from the great writer…James offers a satisfying—if partly imagined—history of the real-life experiences that inspired Brontë’s classic novels.”

  —BookPage

  DRACULA, MY LOVE

  “James gives readers an intriguing alternate theory as to the events that occurred in Stoker’s classic horror tale while at the same time delivering a spooky yet thoroughly romantic love story.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Syrie James weaves a tale of quite a different Dracula: a mouthwateringly handsome, powerful, cultured, and passionate one…We will never think of Dracula in the same way ever again. I…Loved…It!”

  —American Book Center

  NOCTURNE

  “Lyrical, lush, and intensely romantic, this infinitely touching, bittersweet story…will weave its way into readers’ hearts, with its complex characters and compelling emotions sure to linger long after the last page has been turned.”

  —Library Journal

  “A gloriously romantic story! Near-death experiences, a charming and enigmatic stranger, concealed dark secrets, forbidden love…An exquisite feast of passion, turmoil, adventure, and intrigue.”

  —Austenesque Reviews

  FORBIDDEN

  “A YA novel that hits all the right notes…If you enjoy angels, ‘forbidden’ romance, and dashing heroes, then this should be added to your TBR.”

  —USA Today

  “Hands down the most fascinating book I have read in quite a while…You will find yourself wrapped up in their world, indulging in every kiss, and holding your breath with every twist.”

  —Luxury Reading

  THE

  MISSING MANUSCRIPT

  OF

  JANE AUSTEN

  S Y R I E J A M E S

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017 India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by Syrie James.

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / January 2013

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  James, Syrie.

  The missing manuscript of Jane Austen / Syrie James.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61885-1

  1. Austen, Jane, 1775–1817—Manuscripts—Fiction. 2. Fiction—Authorship—Fiction. 3. Treasure troves—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. 5. Love stories. I. Title.

  PS3610.A457M57 2013

  813’.6—dc23 2012036733

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  For Yakun and Yvonne, who have brought such love and light to my life. You are lovely, graceful, gifted, dedicated, loving, and exceptional women, and I am so honored and grateful to be your “other mother.”

  And for all the Jane Austen fans across the globe, who share my reverence and passion for Jane, and always wished there was a seventh novel. This book is for you. I humbly pray that I did her justice.

  How It Began

  THE MINUTE I SAW THE LETTER, I KNEW IT WAS HERS.

  There was no mistaking it: the salutation, the tiny, precise handwriting, the date, the content itself, all confirmed its ancient status and authorship.

  I came upon it entirely by accident. It lay buried between the pages of a very old book of eighteenth-century British poetry that I’d found at a used bookstore in Oxford—an impulsive purchase I’d made to add to my library back home and to keep me company during a few days of sightseeing in England.

  It was to be a quick trip—less than a week. When I’d learned that my boyfri
end, Dr. Stephen Theodore, was attending a medical conference in London, I hadn’t been able to resist tagging along. Although I knew he’d be tied up almost the entire time, it was a great excuse to do some touring on my own. My first stop was Oxford, the site of my unfinished education. I still felt pangs about having to abandon my doctoral studies in En glish literature, and returning to the “city of dreaming spires” filled me with nostalgia. I’d spent a lovely June afternoon and evening exploring my favorite old haunts—wishing, every step of the way, that I could have shared them with Stephen—but we kept in constant touch via e-mail, phone, and text.

  I’d found the book in a dusty pile on a shop’s back table, unappreciated and ignored. I could see why. It wasn’t the prettiest of volumes. It was still in its original, temporary binding—the pages hastily sewn together inside a cheap, cardboardlike cover, with the title printed on a tiny paper label pasted on the spine. The publication date was missing, but I judged the book to be at least two hundred years old.

  I didn’t have a chance to really study my new treasure until the morning after I’d bought it. I awoke to grey and stormy skies, and after a leisurely English breakfast at my B&B, I decided to wait out the rain with a cup of tea in my cozy little room. I sank down into a comfortable chair by the window, turned on the old-fashioned lamp, and carefully opened the aging volume.

  The pages at the beginning were brown and soiled at the edges, but as I went further in they became clean and white, with only a light brown speckling in the margins. I slowly thumbed through the volume, smiling at the familiar, much-loved poems set in antique type. The edges of the pages were ragged where the original owner had used a knife to cut open the folds. Near the end of the book, I noticed that a few pages hadn’t been cut, but were still joined at the edge, creating a kind of pocket. I borrowed a letter opener from the B&B proprietor and gently sliced open the remaining pages. To my surprise, tucked in between the leaves of the last pocket, I discovered a single sheet of paper neatly folded into envelope shape and size.

  I opened it. It was an unfinished letter. The paper was of substantial weight and bore a watermark and the distinctive ribbing from the paper molds of yesteryear. The ink was black-brown. The date and elegant cursive hand proclaimed that it had been written by quill. I read the greeting, and my heart jumped. With disbelieving eyes, I read it through.

  Tuesday 3 September 1816

  My dearest Cassandra,

  Thank you for your Letter, which was truly welcome. I am much obliged to you for writing so soon after your arrival, and for sharing the particulars of your Lodgings, which I suspect provided far more entertainment for the reader, than for the writer.—Although your Bedroom sounds comfortable enough, I am sorry you had no fire, and am appalled that Mrs. Potter thinks to charge three Guineas a week for such a place! Cheltenham is clearly to be preferred in May! Your Pelisse is no doubt very happy it made the journey, for it will be much worn. I hope Mary gains more benefit from the waters than I did. Do let me know how she gets on. We are well here. The illness which I suffered at the time of your going has very kindly taken its leave, without so much as a good-bye, and I am happy to say that my back has given me very little pain the past few days. I am nursing myself into as beautiful a state as I can, so as to better enjoy Edward’s visit. He is a great pleasure to me. He is writing a Novel.—We have all heard it, and it is very good and clever. I believe it could be a first-rate work, if only he can bring himself to finish it.

  Listening to Edward’s composition has put me in something of a melancholy state and given rise to Feelings I had thought long got over, and of which I may give vent only to you. I promise to indulge for no more than five minutes.—It brings to mind that early Manuscript of my own, which went missing at Greenbriar in Devonshire. Even at a distance of fourteen years, I cannot help but think of it with a pang of fondness, sorrow, and regret, as one would a lost child.—Do you recall my theory as to how it came to be lost? I still maintain that it was all vanity, nonsense, and wounded pride. I should never have read it out to you that night during our stay but kept it safe with all the others—although we did have a good laugh! (What banner years for me—two Proposals!) It is tragic that I had only the one Copy.—And yet perhaps it was simply fate, and it was never meant to be seen. You did persuade me to tell no one about it while I was writing it, and you were right; it might indeed have troubled that most valued member of our family. Every time I thought of trying to write it out again, something happened to prevent it—all our travels—so difficult, you will recall, to work at Sydney Place—and then papa died, and it was quite impossible. To recall it now from memory would prove to be a task beyond my power. I have been inspired, however. Yesterday, I sat down and poked fun at my poor, lost creation with a piece of foolishness I call Plan Of A Novel. It is in part what I remember of that Story, embellished with hints from Fanny and others who have been kind enough to suggest what I ought to write next. I hope it will make you laugh.—Which reminds me. To-night, we are to drink tea with

  It ended there—a fragment, unfinished, and unsigned.

  Hands trembling, I read the letter a second time, and a third. There was only one person who could have written that letter; one person, and she happened to be one of the most famous and beloved authors of all time: Jane Austen. That she was my personal favorite author—that I had studied her life and work in detail, and that she had inspired the topic of my never-completed dissertation—only added to my astonishment and excitement.

  If this was authentic—and I felt in my bones that it was—then I had come upon something extremely rare and valuable. Jane’s sister Cassandra, shortly before her death, had burned most of her correspondence with Jane, or expunged those parts she preferred to keep private, before giving them as mementos to her nieces and nephews. Some 161 letters survived and had been published—and I was certain this was not among them. This was something new.

  I fired up my laptop to verify my theory and logged on to the Net. In no time, I found a website that posted all of Jane Austen’s preserved letters. I was thrilled to confirm that the images of her handwriting did indeed match that in the letter I’d found. I jumped to the letters from 1816, near the end of Jane’s life. There was a portion of a letter dated 4 September 1816, written to Cassandra when she was in Cheltenham—but the first two pages were missing, as well as the top of page three. Cassandra had deliberately disposed of those parts.

  My pulse quickened. The fragment I held in my hands seemed to be an early draft of that letter’s missing first half. Jane must have been interrupted in the act of composing the letter and hidden it within the pages of this book, not wishing anyone but Cassandra to be aware of its contents. Maybe Jane forgot where she put it, and the next day began the letter afresh. She was ill at the time. She died ten months later. The book of poetry must have been passed on to Cassandra, and at some point was sold or lost. No one had ever discovered the secret it contained.

  I was so excited, I could hardly breathe. If I was right—if this was indeed the real thing, an unknown Jane Austen letter—it would make headlines. But even more thrilling than the letter itself was the mention of a missing manuscript. As far as the publishing world knew, Jane Austen had written only six full-length novels and miscellaneous shorter works, which had all been read, scrutinized, and canonized to within an inch of their lives. A newly discovered work by Austen would set off a global wave of Janeite frenzy!

  I paced the room, uncertain what I should do with this precious find. Alert the media? Call a museum? No, I decided; they’d think I was a crackpot. I couldn’t tell anyone about this until the letter was authenticated. But to whom should I go?

  The answer came to me in a flash: Dr. Mary I. Jesse. She’d been my advisor, my mentor, and my teacher during my graduate studies in English Literature at Oxford, and I revered her. When I had to leave the university four years earlier to help take care of my mother, Dr. Jesse had been very supportive. “I know you’ll come back and finish some
day,” she’d said. But I never did.

  Dr. Jesse was considered one of the preeminent Austen experts of the day. She’d written countless scholarly papers on Austen as well as a celebrated biography, was a past president of the Jane Austen Literary Foundation, and had taught Austen for more than four decades. She’d retired and left Oxford about the same time that I did, to edit and authenticate a trunk of rare manuscripts discovered in the attic at Chawton House Library. We’d fallen out of touch since.

  I knew I had to find her.

  I pulled out my cell phone. I had an old e-mail address from my grad-school days, and I sent Mary a quick note, telling her I was in Oxford, and I’d love to see her. The e-mail bounced back with a “delivery failed permanently” message, informing me that the account I was trying to reach did not exist. I checked every online social-media forum I could think of, but Dr. Mary Jesse wasn’t anywhere. Her phone number was unlisted.

  For a few minutes, I was stymied. I’m not generally the bold, spur-of-the-moment type—but I couldn’t sit still. I grabbed my raincoat and umbrella and walked the long, familiar blocks in the freezing rain to the St. Cross Building on Manor Road. The Faculty Office of the English Language and Literature Department was thankfully open, and even better, my friend Michelle—who’d nurtured me for two years while I worked on my doctorate—was sitting behind the desk.

  “Hello there,” I said, catching my breath as I dropped my dripping umbrella by the door.

  Michelle looked up from her computer and greeted me with a huge smile. “Samantha! How wonderful to see you. And looking as beautiful as ever!”

  We hugged and chatted like magpies, catching up on four years’ worth of news in four minutes. I briefly recapped what I’d been up to: still single at thirty-one but dating a very nice man, and happily working as a Special Collections Librarian at a small university in Southern California.

  “So you’re not here to reenroll?” Michelle asked, disappointed.