Product Description

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 fortunenor 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8789 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. She is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey. Gillian Beer is King Edward Professor of English at the University of Cambridge and President of Clare Hall.

Customer Reviews

Austen's masterpiece
More likeable than 'Emma', more mature than 'Pride and Prejudice'. For my money, this is Austen's masterpiece. If you've not read Austen before, begin with P&P, just to be convinced that 19th century writers can still be funny. But then move on to this, to see that 19th century writers can be so much more.

Amazing! The original chick lit...
I was always a little wary of reading any Jane Austen. I guess I just saw my Gran watching some BBC adaptations when I was a kid and thought, Bleugh! How dull...
There came a point when I decided it was time for me to read some of the original and great books that have so many references in today's culture (most of which went over my head and I was starting to feel left out) and I began with 'Jane Eyre', which was superb.
I am not a massive fan of chick lit because the books are so formulaic... you know the story, girl meets boy, there is a misunderstanding they nearly don't explore their love and then... they do. Happy ending etc...
Now I know where they got their ideas. This book in its day was a truly original story that has been the blueprint for the watered down and often poorly written, modern female romance book. It is exceptional, and unlike most modern girly books, had me gripped from the start, a good old-fashioned page-turner.
The main protagonist Anne is the middle daughter of the superficial Elliot family of Kellynch Hall. She is the down to earth and loveable character that despairs of her families' vanity and the importance they place on title (e.g. her father's title of Baronet). The focus of the story is a love Anne had in during her late teens, Frederick Wentworth, with whom a trusted family friend advised her against marrying, due to his lack of connections. Foolishly, and much to her regret Anne breaks off her engagement with Frederick Wentworth and he pursues a career in the navy. He returns 8 years later as Captain Wentworth, with a great career, which makes up for his lack of breeding and land and makes him finally an acceptable husband for someone of `society'. But does he forgive Anne for her snubbing of him based on her relatives' advice? This is a delightful will they/won't they book, with additional sub plots thrown in for good measure where all the details are drawn together at the end for a very satisfying read.
The footnotes in this edition are very useful and explain not just old words but historical events and social references.

It's Jane Austen - You Get What You Expect
Theres always something so satistfying about finishing a Jane Austen novel. Whether it be due to the characteristically happy endings, the light - hearted manner with which Austen always rounds off her story, or the fact the girl ALWAYS gets the handsome, rich, intelligent guy she's fallen in love with, you cannot help but put the book down with a small smile and a sigh of relief, proud to have had the endurance to have reached the end, all previous complaints about how long and boring the novel is forgotten, you may even find yourself sporting the notion of picking the novel up and starting again immeiateley.

If one thing is to be said about Jane Austen, it must be that she probably understood human beings better than anyone else who has ever walked the earth. Human emotion, intention, motive, desire, pain, sadness and happiness - people's behaviour in every day society, the nature of self- reflection, Auten sees all this around her and mimicis it to perfection in her novels. Her characters, written almost 200 years ago in a society very different from our own (supposedly) are often far more identifiable and relateable to us now than those from novels written but 10 years ago. Excepting the caricatures, Austen's characters are 'real' - you will learn to understand the character of Anne Elliot better than people you may have known for years, and you will also learn to see your own feeling and motives in a different light, and notice that you and Anne are not as different as you may initially seem.

Persuaion follows the same formula as all Austen novels (one of the biggest weakneses of her writing I believe - for the reader always knows what will happen at the end). Girl meets boy, girl cannot be with boy for some particular reason, girl is tempted by another boy who turns out to have bad intentions, girl finally marries the first boy. Reading the blurb at the back of the novel will provide potential readers with the names and details required to fill in the blanks, so I will not write more here, though I will say that this is not my favourite Austen novel. I have studied both Pride and Prejudice and Emma recently and believe the latter to be a better constructed novel (it has often been described as her most perfect novel) though my preference towards it may be due to my being so familiar with the story and techniques used in that novel.

One of the key issues with Austen is that, a lot of the time her novels are just not very entertaining. The amount of internal action far outweighs the external action of the novels, and often the parts of the story that the reader is most interested in seems to be what Austen is most reluctant to give us - ie contact time between Anne Ellliot and Captain Wentworth. However, for the reader who is willing to invest time and energy into the novel, you will find that almost every sentence is worth reading - Austen doesn't write purely to fill up space, each lines holds some form of insight or insult into society and people - you just have to be willing to read between the lines to spot it.

I've written far too many essays on Jane Austen novels over the years to bare the thought of writing another so I'll cut my review short here - theres nothing like finding out and forming opions on a novel like reading it yourself, which I would advise anyone who is a fan of Austen literature to do with this novel. Her books are not for everybody, and dont be fooled into thinking them simple love stories as they are often portrayed as on tv/film adaptations. It's been said that the best writers write about what they know, and Austen is no exception - so is it any surprise her novels aren't filled with pretty parks, unconditional love and perfect families? Austen lived in her real world, and she sure as hell wasn't afraid to write about it.