Persuasion
Unabridged Original Classic Edition
by Jane Austen
Persuasion is Jane Austen’s last completed novel, published six months after her death in 1817, along with Northanger Abbey.
The story follows Anne Elliot, a 27-year-old Englishwoman whose family moves and rents their home to an admiral and his wife to lower their expenses and reduce their debt. The wife’s brother, Captain Frederick Wentworth, had been engaged to Anne earlier, but Anne was persuaded by her friends and family to break the engagement because his low social status and lack of wealth made him an unsuitable match for a woman of her social standing.
Anne and Captain Wentworth, both unattached, meet again after a separation of almost eight years, setting the scene for a second chance at love and marriage for Anne, who is no longer quite so susceptible to the influence of others’ opinions.
Generally accepted as her most maturely written novel, Persuasion shows a refinement of literary conception and full development of her signature use of free indirect speech in narrative form. Anne Elliot is noteworthy among Austen’s heroines for her relative maturity, reflecting the maturity of the author and her “older and wiser” view of human behavior and the world she lived in.
This quality edition includes the complete text of the original classic by Jane Austen. This freshly edited and formatted edition was prepared entirely by human editors and is not a machine scanned facsimile of an older version. Printed on heavyweight bright white paper, it features a fully laminated cover with a new full color design.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England into a family at the lowest tier of the English landed gentry.
With the exception of a short period at a boarding school and visits to a brother who was, for a time, a London banker, Austen lived her entire life within a close-knit family group very much like the gentry who make up the characters of her novels, mainly located in the countryside very much like the settings of her novels. In a cruelly ironic twist, Austen’s family would suffer the fate feared by Mrs. Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice” when her father died, unexpectedly in 1805, leaving his wife and unmarried daughters destitute and dependent upon her brothers for support.
In her 30s, Jane started to anonymously publish her works. Between 1811-16, she published Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (a work she referred to as her “darling child,” which also received critical acclaim), Mansfield Park and Emma. Authorship was attributed to “A Woman”.
She found modest critical and financial success in her lifetime, but by 1830 her books had been out of print for a decade when the copyrights were purchased and new illustrated editions included in Richard Bentley’s popular “Standard Novels” series. With wider exposure they gained popularity and stature and sold steadily if not spectacularly. Throughout the 19th century Austen’s work had an admiring following among Britain’s self-proclaimed “literary elite,” but it was really not until the early twentieth century that her novels became the object of academic studies as “great literature”.
Austen’s work was part of the transition to realism in 19th century British literature, and her romantic fiction, set for the most part among the gentry of the English countryside was marked by dry wit, satire, and sharp social commentary, often directed at the unfairness of the British legal and cultural systems that left women virtually entirely dependent upon marriage and family for social standing and economic security.
In 1816, at the age of 41, Jane’s health began to deteriorate. She made efforts to continue working, editing older works and starting a new novel called The Brothers, unfinished but published after her death as Sanditon. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.
Product details
Publisher: S. M. Holden, Independently published (June 19, 2024)
Language: English
Paperback: 269 pages
ISBN: 979-8328053457
Item Weight: 1.04 pounds
Dimensions: 6 x 0.61 x 9 inches
Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars 97 ratings
4.2 on Goodreads 717,093 ratings
List Price: $11.97
