Gender-specific casting. Prooflistening will be word perfect. We are not accepting duplicate claims at this time.The Watsons is one of two novels that Jane Austen left unfinished at her death in 1817. The premise of The Watsons was known to Austen’s family, and her niece Catherine Hubback wrote a novel using this premise entitled The Younger Sister that was published in 1850, albeit with considerable differences from the novel fragment Austen left behind. In 1871, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published a revised and enlarged edition of his 1869 biography of Austen, and this second edition included the previously unpublished manuscript of The Watsons along with an introduction by Austen-Leigh.
In 1923, The Watsons appeared in print again, this time with the story continued by an author identified as L. Oulton. Unlike Hubback’s The Younger Sister, this publication is a true continuation of Austen’s The Watsons, including Austen’s text as she wrote it. Although Austen had not indicated chapter divisions in her text, Oulton’s continuation includes Austen’s text as the first five and a half chapters and supplements these with an additional thirteen and a half chapters as well as Austen-Leigh’s 1871 introduction. Austen’s text comprises just over half of the novel because Oulton’s chapters are so much shorter. With nineteen chapters total, this version of The Watsons is shorter than any of the novels Austen completed in her lifetime. Almost nothing is known about L. Oulton, not even what “L.” stands for nor whether this name is a pseudonym. The Oulton continuation of The Watsons fared poorly among the critics, but it has the distinction of being the first true continuation of The Watsons in a long line of The Watsons continuations; the trend of writing continuations of The Watsons has become increasingly popular with the rise of Jane Austen fan fiction, particularly in the 21st century. (Summary by David Purdy)
I am very grateful to Christine and Jim, who have kindly agreed to return as DPL and narrator respectively for yet another Jane Austen DR. It is a pleasure to work with you both!
Source text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63569
COLOUR-CODED TEXT (please read only from this text!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rFFO2w1iBlU6WOAv7n2W0ofyiTqyRmMx?usp=sharing
Deadline: Please submit your recording within 2 months of placing your claim. If you cannot complete the recording within this time, please post in the thread to relinquish your claim or to ask the BC for an extension. If your recording is not completed by the deadline, your claim may be reassigned at the BC's discretion.
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Prooflistening level: Word Perfect
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Magic Window:
BC Admin
Genres for the project: Dramatic Readings; Family Life; General Fiction/Published 1900 onward; Historical Fiction; Romance
Keywords that describe the book: posthumous publication, continuation, regency era
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LibriVox recording settings: mono (1 channel), 44100 Hz sample rate, 128 kbps constant bit rate MP3. See the Tech Specs
For individual roles:
Submit one file per act. At the beginning of the first file, say:
Leave 3-5 seconds of space between your lines (room noise, not generated silence)."Character, read by your name."
For narration/stage directions:
Leave 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning.
Say:
At the end of each file say:"Act # of The Watsons, by Jane Austen and L. Oulton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org."
If you are recording the final section of the book, add:"End of Act #."
Leave 5 seconds of silence at the end."End of The Watsons, by Jane Austen and L. Oulton."
Filename:
For individual roles: watsons_role_##.mp3 where ## is the chapter number. (e.g. watsons_emma_01.mp3)
For final files: watsons_##_austen_128kb.mp3 where ## is the chapter number. (e.g. watsons_01_austen_128kb.mp3)
Upload to the LibriVox Uploader: https://librivox.org/login/uploader
(If you have trouble reading the image above, please contact an admin)
MC to select: lorda
Copy and paste the file link generated by the uploader into a new post in this thread along with the file duration (mm:ss). Watch this thread for prooflistening notes.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! Just post in this thread.
