A HANDWRITTEN manuscript of an unfinished Jane Austen novel has fetched nearly £1million at auction.

The novel, entitled The Watsons, sold for the astonishing amount despite the fact that it was never completed by the author, who lived in Steventon for the first 25 years of her life.

The book sold at Sotheby’s in London last Thursday for £993,250 – three times the guide price – to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

The handwritten manuscript was owned by Joan Austen-Leigh, one of the author’s descendants, and is the only copy of the story that exists.

The first 12 pages of the novel were sold during the First World War to raise funds for the Red Cross to a library in New York and experts believe that the remaining manuscript was only a quarter completed.

The Watsons was written in a similar style to her other novels and follows the story of four sisters, the daughters of a widowed clergyman.

Experts believe that Emma, the heroine of the novel, is based on the author herself. The unfinished story follows Emma, the youngest daughter of a sick and widowed clergyman who dies, leaving her and her sisters impoverished.

The work is believed to have been started in 1804 and abandoned by Austen a year later after the death of her own father.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s senior specialist on books, said: “It may have been just too close to the bone when her own father died.

“The situation she was envisaging for Emma – being financially dependent on male relations – was about to happen to Austen herself.

“Her work has such a light touch it would have been very tough to write about her own sad circumstances.

“The Watsons is quintessential Jane Austen in style and the influence of this novel on her later works can be clearly seen.”

Austen spent the first 25 years of her life in Steventon, before moving to Bath and later to Chawton, near Alton, and finally to Winchester, where she died in 1817, aged 41.

Sadly, the rectory in Steventon was pulled down shortly after her death, although St Nicholas’ Church where her father was rector, still stands.