If you're a Jane Austen fan, you can't miss this. The story of love lost and then found again in the style that only Jane Austen can write. Keep the kleenex handy.
Probably my favorite Austen novel! It was her last book and critics agree it is her most romantic. I adore the heroine (even more than- gasp- Elizabeth Bennett) because she is just an all-around good hearted lady who endures her family's indifference towards her. I, too, was in tears at the end after reading Cpt Wentworth's letter. Such a romantic book.
After reading two other novels by Jane Austen, this is my only favorite so far. I didn't care much for Elizabeth Bennett, Mr. Darcy was o.k., Emma entertained me but not enough to make me love the story but I did love Anne Elliot as the highly principled, smart, kind, and soft spoken moderate woman I will always admire.
This is my 3rd Jane Austen read and the 3rd. was the winner, she won me with this story. This is the most romantic book I've read recently and I'm glad I persevered in my search of the the perfect Austen novel for me. Captain Wentworth's love declaration to Miss Anne Elliot will forever be regarded as a masterpiece of love perpetuated in words:
"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago."
This book showed more emotion than any other of Jane Austen's work. For once, I didn't mind all the walking and sighing and reciting lines of romantic poetry to oneself. It was charmingly comic, romantic and full of hidden, repressed desire for the one the protagonist refused.
The second Austen I read, and how dearly do I love her men! Wentworth's letter to Anne had me in tears. This is easily relatable to anyone today, and half the time you'll be thinking, "LOOK AT EACH OTHER, FOR GOD'S SAKE!" (At least, I was.) An excellent book that will most definitely hold a special place in my heart.
I really wanted to like this book, but I'm just not an Austen fan. Give me a Bronte any day. It may be because I'm a newspaper copy editor, but I just wanted to shorten her sentences and use more periods, fewer semicolons.
The story line is nice, but I didn't feel I coould relate to Anne.
This is one of my favorite Jane Austen books. This has to be one of the most amazing love stories in literature. You cannot call yourself a well read person if you have not read Persuasion by Jane Austen.
When the story begins, the heroine has been persuaded by a family friend to turn down the hero's offer of marriage for he is not as wealthy or as well connected as her family wanted for her. They are parted for eight years. She regrets being persuaded to refuse his marriage proposal. He returns eight years later as a Captain in the Royal Navy. He's now a wealthy, sought after bachelor. The story begins here. Upon his return, there is amazing tension between the two. The famous note he gives her is one of the sweetest declarations of love that I've come across in literature. Captain Wentworth declaration of love is written so differently from the declarations of love by other heroes in Austen's books. Austen's other heroes don't have the same intensity or passion that Wentworth has. One can see that this final book by Jane Austen is a more nuanced look at love from a mature author.
This book was harder to read than the other Jane Austen books I've encountered. Usually page-turners, I'm having a difficult time getting through this one.
I have not read Jane Austen for years but was attracted to this book based on the subject: woman and man fall in love, plan marriage, then woman feels duty bound to break engagement because of family displeasure. Years later the couple meet again and..... Read the book to find out what happens next. Persuasion seems to be the last book Austen wrote before her death at age forty-two. In this book she not only explores complicated relationships but changing views on women and men's roles arising in the early 19th century.
In this, Jane Austen's last novel, appears her most memorable herioine -- Anne Elliot, a young woman of perfect breeding, profound depth of emotion, and unswerving integrity. These virtues, however, exist in a world, the world of country gentry in Regency England, in which shallowness and hypocrisy thrive and ever threaten to win domination.
"Persuasion" represents the crowning achievement of Jane Austen's career, the final unfolding ofg her matchless art. Marvin Mudrick
This 2004 edition came as a supplement to the dvd of Persuasion.
From Amazon.com: Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. In this case, she had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, social stationwise, and that Anne could do better. The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea. As always, Austen's storytelling is so confident, you can't help but allow yourself to be taken on the enjoyable journey.
