Persuasion (Penguin Classics)
Jane Austen's beloved and subtly subversive final novel of romantic tension and second chances. Now a motion picture from Netflix starring Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, and a TikTok Book Club Pick. At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Community Reviews
Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel. I love it...especially the charm of getting a second chance with a love you once let go. The book has some of Austen's best lines in it as well - such as the letter that the captain writes. Beautiful stuff!
Austen continues to impress and comment on European society to this day with her equally fun romances. I enjoyed that this was an account of someone's day-to-day life and opinions that happen to include a great romance, but that isn't for everybody and it would be difficult to recreate without losing her energy to it that only she seems to write with.
Anne and Captain Wentworth provide a different love story than the other Austen novels because they fell in love out of sight of the reader 8 years before the story begins. They also broke up 8 years ago. So the story hinges on the question of whether they will- both being single- get back together. It's perfectly written- with no plot holes or boring parts. The only shortcoming for me is that they just don't spend that much time interacting in the reader's view. I can't fall in love with them or with Captain Wentworth for myself the way I fell in love with the characters in Pride and Prejudice.
Nonetheless, this novel is still Top 3 Jane Austen for me. Here's my ranking: (1) Pride and Prejudice, (2) Sense and Sensibility, (3) Persuasion, (4) Emma, (5) Mansfield Park, (6) Lady Susan (much shorter). I don't especially like Northanger Abbey, so I'm not putting it on this list, but it's okay.
Nonetheless, this novel is still Top 3 Jane Austen for me. Here's my ranking: (1) Pride and Prejudice, (2) Sense and Sensibility, (3) Persuasion, (4) Emma, (5) Mansfield Park, (6) Lady Susan (much shorter). I don't especially like Northanger Abbey, so I'm not putting it on this list, but it's okay.
I'm surprised to say that I've enjoyed this book far more than Pride and prejudice. I liked Anne and I found myself relating to her in some ways
Just saw the first of the new Masterpiece Theater "Complete Jane Austen" -- extremely enjoyable, and masterfully condensed. So I wanted to see what they left out. They changed some things, but they really captured the breathless emotional agony of the story.
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