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Published posthumously with Northanger Abbey in 1817, Persuasion crowns Jane Austen's remarkable career. It is her most passionate and introspective love story. This richly illustrated and annotated edition brings her last completed novel to life with previously unmatched vitality. In the same format that so rewarded readers of Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, it offers running commentary on the novel (conveniently placed alongside Austen's text) to explain difficult words, allusions, and contexts, while bringing together critical observations and scholarship for an enhanced reading experience. The abundance of color illustrations allows the reader to see the characters, locations, clothing, and carriages of the novel, as well as the larger political and historical events that shape its action. In his Introduction, distinguished scholar Robert Morrison examines the broken engagement between Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth, and the ways in which they wander from one another even as their enduring feelings draw them steadily back together. His notes constitute the most sustained critical commentary ever brought to bear on the novel and explicate its central conflicts as well as its relationship to Austen's other works, and to those of her major contemporaries, including Lord Byron, Walter Scott, and Maria Edgeworth. Specialists, Janeites, and first-time readers alike will treasure this annotated and beautifully illustrated edition, which does justice to the elegance and depth of Jane Austen's time-bound and timeless story of loneliness, missed opportunities, and abiding love.… (more)
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The illustrations and notes – for almost every page! – turn the book a historical lesson. The footnotes themselves are well written,
A beautiful, enjoyable, and informative book. Austen’s story is greatly enhanced by the preface and annotations. Recommended for fans of Jane Austen and/or female writers of the Regency/romantic period.
EJ 11/2012
Austen’s late novel lacks some of the charm of her first successes, but it is filled with warm familial feelings and friendship, despite there being no small amount of silliness in the vanity and pride of Anne’s father and sisters. The obstacles to Anne and Captain Wentworth renewing their affections are, ultimately, minimal. There are no great intrigues, though some are feared, and no real villain, though her cousin was certainly villainous in the past. We have instead a close study of Anne’s inner anguish as she seeks to interpret Wentworth’s motives and his behaviour toward her. There are highs and lows for both of them, but it all ends well in a rushed last couple of chapters.
For me, it remains a lesser Austen work. Yet I still find myself returning to it years later and finding that absence has neither reduced nor augmented its charms. I do rather wish, however, that Lady Russell had trusted Anne’s discernment and good sense from the start, as Anne and Wentworth would surely have been as happy in married life as their older models in Admiral Croft and his wife.
Recommended, as with all of Austen’s works.