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Zusatztext “Critics! especially [recently]! value Persuasion highly! as the author’s ‘most deeply felt fiction!’ ‘the novel which in the end the experienced reader of Jane Austen puts at the head of the list.’ . . . Anne wins back Wentworth and wins over the reader; we may! like him! end up thinking Anne’s character ‘perfection itself.’” –from the Introduction by Judith Terry Informationen zum Autor Jane Austen Klappentext Featuring one of her most likeable characters, this sparkling love story set in a seaside resort is Jane Austen's final finished work. Since Anne Elliot eight years ago rejected the marriage proposal of Captain Wentworth, a penniless naval officer, she has resigned herself to a quiet life at home, tending to the imagined needs of her spoiled sisters and vain father (Austen's brilliant, utterly conceited creation, Sir Walter Elliot). But when Captain Wentworth reappears in their midst, having made his fortune at sea, Anne must ask herself whether she made the right decision-or allowed herself to be persuaded against her heart. Jane Austen's last completed novel and her most optimistic and romantic work, Persuasion gives full scope to Austen's artistic powers, blending sharp wit and warm sympathy, stylistic brilliance and matchless insight. As Margaret Drabble describes in her introduction, it is a story of "perseverance and patience and delayed romance," affirming the lasting power of love and the rejuvenating power of hope. With an Introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Diane Johnson Chapter One SIR WALTER Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century-and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed-this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened: ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, Nov. 5, 1789; Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791. Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer´s hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary´s birth-"married, Dec. 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,"-and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife. Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms: how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale-serving the office of High Sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto: "Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset," and Sir Walter´s hand-writing again in this finale: "Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter." Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot´s character: vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think mo...
