Persuasion: Jane Austen: xxxvii (Penguin Classics)

by Gillian Beer (Introduction), Gillian Beer (Introduction), Jane Austen (Author), Jane Austen (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.38

  Her last completed novel, marrying witty social realism to a 'Cinderella' love story, Jane Austen's Persuasion is edited with an introduction by Gillian Beer in Penguin Classics . Anne Elliot, twenty-seven and still single, seems destined for spinsterhood. In her youth, she broke off an engagement to penniless Captain Wentworth at the insistence of her friend Lady Russell, acquiescing to the demands of her class at the expense of her happiness. But when Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic wars rich and famous, Anne finds her affection rekindled - even though Wentworth seems more interested in Anne's friend Louisa Musgrove. 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. In her introduction, Gillian Beer discusses Austen's portrayal of the double-edged nature of persuasion and the clash between old and new worlds. This edition also includes a new chronology and full textual notes. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. Austen began writing at a young age, embarking on what is possibly her best-known work, Pride and Prejudice , at the age of 22. She was the author of Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Emma , Persuasion , Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey . If you liked Persuasion , you may enjoy George Eliot's Middlemarch , also available in Penguin Classics . The most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal . (Virginia Woolf).

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $18.51

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $4.79

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $12.94

  Eight years ago, Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth fell head over heels in love. But Anne's snobbish family put a stop to their engagement, believing the young naval captain wasn't good enough for her. Pretty, intelligent Anne soon realises it was a terrible mistake, and spends her twenties in the shadow of her father and her selfish sisters. But she never forgets.

  Then Captain Wentworth - by now a successful, wealthy man, looking for a wife - walks back into her life. Can he forgive her? Does he still love her? And could they ever be happy, after all this time?