Persuasion

The paper and print quality is very bad. Most pages have a blurred print.

I bought this novel as it was mentioned in another novel I've recently read. I was intrigued as I hadn't read thus one. Great price but sadly the font was too small for me to read comfortably and it was an edition designed for students with a synopsis of the plot. I've donated it and will find a copy which is easier to read!

Anne Elliot is twenty seven. At the age of nineteen she was persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to refuse the proposal of marriage made by Captain Wentworth and has lived to regret her decision. But Captain Wentworth reappears in her life when his sister and brother-in-law Admiral and Mrs Croft rent Kellynch Hall from Anne's father Sir Walter Elliot. The Elliots are downsizing - in modern parlance - in order to save money and Sir Walter and his eldest daughter are moving to Bath - where Anne later joins them.In Sir Walter Jane Austen has created a monster. He is very concerned with his own appearance and is constantly commenting on the appearance and social position of his friends and acquaintances. Think Lady Catherine de Bourgh - only worse! Bath society is well portrayed with all its snobbery and civilities. Mr Elliot - the heir presumptive to Sir Walter's title - appears in Bath and curries favour with the family he despises. Anne distrusts him but her father - who judges by appearances - is taken in.`Persuasion' is one of the quieter novels but there is still Austen's trademark irony and love of the ridiculous with many memorable characters. Anne's younger sister - hypochondriac Mary Musgrove - married to the humorous down to earth Charles; Admiral and Mrs Croft - reminiscent of Mrs and Mrs Gardiner in `Pride and Prejudice'. Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove who at first appear to be uncaring and flirtatious but who change during the story to something more sensible and realistic, partly due to Louisa's well known accident at Lyme Regis.The novel repays close attention to bring out all its delightful asides and like all Austen novels it is worth reading more than once. If you are new to Jane Austen I would not start with Persuasion - better to try `Pride and Prejudice' or `Northanger Abbey' first. This edition contains an interesting introduction and notes on the text as well as the original last chapter which was later changed by the author to the current ending.

I won't review the story itself, which has been reviewed elsewhere. However, I would like to praise this particular paperback edition of the book (Wordsworth Classics, ISBN 978-1-85326-056-8).It is lightweight, in a reasonably good-sized font for reading (although it's not large print, by any means - more like an old-fashioned paperback.) It contains a thoughtful introduction, written by Elaine Jordan, Reader in Literature, University of Essex. (This is probably best read AFTER you've read the book, if the story is new to you.) It also contains a 'cancelled' chapter of the novel, and a good Notes section at the end which defines a few terms which might be unfamiliar to the modern reader, or puts an item into context.This is not a 'collector's edition' meant to last forever, by any means, but it is a good, sturdy paperback, made for reading.It also contains a profusion of black-and-white illustrations, which have obviously come from a nineteenth-century edition of the book. These add charm and character.Wordsworth Classics are a very good buy.

Persuasion is a page-turning, heart-stopping story that I've read at least twenty times, and I find something new and illuminating in it with every reading. It is also, like all of Austen's novels, filled with delicious social satire and wickedly funny moments.Still not persuaded? How about this suggestion: If the latest Persuasion film doesn't send you running for your nearest bookstore (and I hope it will), then rent the 1995 version directed by Roger Michell and starring Ciarán Hinds and Amanda Root. If you do, I guarantee you will not be able to resist having that book in your hands. And as an added bonus, the book has the best love letter of any novel you'll ever read. So good you'll want to commit it to memory. ("Tell me not that I am too late...") It's not too late to read. This book arrived on time and it was great quality! please get it, you don't regret it.

Unlike the others in the novel, Anne enjoys life in the countryside and does not long for the leisure town, Bath. The countryside reminds her of old memories from when her mother was still alive and when she was not alone. Anne’s “reactions are expressed more through descriptive details than through exposition. The tone of the landscape controls the passage”.“The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth, and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory”.(Here, it is clearly seen that Jane Austen was inspired by the Romantic poetry of the early nineteenth century, e.g. Byron).Anne’s dislike for Bath is presented several times in the story: “first from the circumstance of having been three years at school there, after her mother’s death; and secondly, from her happening to be not in perfectly good spirits the only winter which she had afterwards spent there with herself” (‘Persuasion’). At times, the story of Anne becomes almost autobiographical by Jane Austen e.g. that Jane Austen did not like to live in Bath, she believes in true love but is also aware of the importance of tradition and social status like Anne.Jane Austen described Anne’s character in a letter to Fanny Knight: “pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked […] you may perhaps like the Heroine, as she is almost too good for me” (‘Letter to Fanny Knight ‘).Furthermore, biographer Claire Tomalin characterizes ‘Persuasion’ as Austen’s “present to herself, to Miss Sharp, to Cassandra, to Martha Lloyd . . . to all women who had lost their chance in life and would never enjoy a second spring” (Tomalin, Claire: ‘Jane Austen – A Life’) due to the fact that Jane Austen never married during her life. She was a strong and unique character herself; She accepted a proposal but changed her mind after 12 hours because she did not truly love him.“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”After saying no to Frederick Wentworth’s proposal, Anne begins to regret the decision and the unhappiness that follows with it eventually affects her so much that she loses the bloom of her youth, expressed by Jane Austen in a letter to her sister, Fanny Knight. With her heart broken, it takes longer than expected to recover from the relationship she had with Frederick“[…] but not with a few months ended Anne’s share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect”.Anne challenges society’s norms and expectations of the 19th Century’s ideal vision of a woman. The fact that they mostly think and act with their hearts creates a portrayal in literature which is considered very modern compared to society of the time.“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”My opinion on the book:Unlike Jane Austen’s other stories (“Pride and Prejudice”, “Emma”, “Mansfield Park”, and so on), it is very different and does not compare itself easily, due to Anne’s age (27) which is quite old, so she has more experience and more of her own voice than the other female characters that we know of.But Anne is indeed a true heroine. The story touched me deeply and every time I think of my time in Bath, I smile.As a reader you experience all of Anne’s thoughts vividly, you feel her pain and sorrow, and you feel the hope that she keeps on clinging to.A beautiful and spell-bound story!