Refined and Returned: Disclaimer, Copyright, and Preface

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Refined and Returned

by Eireanne Michaels

A Completed Version of The Watsons 

by Jane Austen

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Preface

This story is a completed version of a fragment titled The Watsons by Jane Austen. Written on paper with watermarks from 1803 and 1804, the work was set aside by the author for reasons unknown and never finished. While many have speculated on why Austen abandoned it, the truth remains a mystery.

The original manuscript of The Watsons is preserved in two locations:

MS. MA 1034, Morgan Library & Museum, New York

MS. Eng. e. 3764, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Digitized versions can be viewed at the Morgan Library & Museum and the Bodleian Library, with further details available through Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts (https://janeausten.ac.uk).

A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (1871) first published The Watsons, bringing the unfinished work into public knowledge. Digital editions of this work are available via Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. As a work first published over 150 years ago, The Watsons is in the public domain.

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This author has chosen to complete the story by adhering to Austen’s general style, allowing the characters to act within the personalities she crafted while responding to their circumstances. The original fragment, included here with slight edits and adjustments—primarily additions based on material Jane Austen removed or revised in her manuscript—has been completed in this work by Eireanne Michaels.

To preserve clarity, all modifications and additions to Austen’s original fragment in this work are in italics (due to formatting issues that made brackets too bulky), allowing readers to distinguish between the fragment and the completed work. Any words that would have been italicized for emphasis within the fragment shall therefore be underlined.

Next: Prologue

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. The author does not speak for or represent the people, companies, corporations, or brands mentioned in this book. While this work may incorporate historical figures and events, it is a dramatized interpretation and not intended as a factual account. Any characterizations, dialogue, or events are fictionalized for storytelling purposes.

Copyright © 2024 Eireanne Michaels (Erin M Harris)

All rights reserved. No part of this book, apart from what comes from the original fragment and manuscript, may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

No AI training without in any way limiting the author's and publisher's exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative and artificial intelligence AI technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.