 Then came "The Watsons - A Fragment by Jane Austen & Concluded by L. Oulton", published in 1923 and prefaced by Austen-Leigh’s original introduction of 1871, as if to give it authenticity.The American edition went further in suggesting that the continuation had family sanction by claiming that Miss Oulton "has carried out her task so successfully that the reader will share with the members of the Austen family, to whom she showed her work, an inability to recognize the place where she took up the story from her distinguished predecessor".A contemporary reviewer for "The Spectator" certainly noticed, however, commenting that "soon after she has taken up the tale, we become aware that all the rich reality has faded out of it and from being, as it were, a perfect little Dresden group, it has shrunk to a two-dimensional drawing", for all that the author "is often successful in hitting off Miss Austen's style and intonation".