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Persuasion, Annotated, with Commentary
Persuasion, Annotated, with Commentary
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Bookdoors’ PERSUASION is the most richly annotated edition of Jane Austen’s novel available in print or online. Designed to be an ebook, this and the other “In Context” editions of the Austen novels offer you swift, seamless access to information and commentary.
The modest price underscores BookDoors' mission (please see bookdoors.com) to make these works accessible to an audience of widely different experience and expectations. The “Literature in Its Context” series aspires to provide today’s reader with the knowledge an informed reader of 1815 possessed and that Austen took for granted. As you read you'll have, should you wish, an interpretive discussion ofPERSUASION. You’ll also find illustrations, an Austen Glossary of some 1000 words, a time-line that includes cultural, scientific, and technological developments between 1770-1817, a select bibliography, and a brief biography of Austen.
Austen writes in EMMA that "Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken." That's true of PERSUASION as well, and now, nearly two centuries later, "a little mistaken" and "a little disguised" understate the challenge.
At a basic level PERSUASION’S diction can be obscure, for words themselves have changed or disappeared. This In Context edition defines words and phrases such as “freehold,” “insipid,” “disinterested” (not to be confused with uninterested), “pleasure-grounds,” “awful,” and “very low woman.”
A second order of annotation explains the historical background in which Austen roots the novel, including her life and its convergences with her fiction, and the novel’s social and cultural context. This includes the Royal Navy (for which Austen had a special affection owing to two of her brothers’ becoming officers), entail, class, male narcissism and privilege, and the limitations their gender imposes upon women all propel PERSUASION.
A third level of commentary addresses PERSUASION as a work of the literary imagination by one of England’s driest, most ironic novelists. This, Austen’s gentlest novel, spins off from an episode in her life for which she imagines a different conclusion. The title refers in part to our capacity for rationalization and self-delusion, a favorite theme in Austen. Her last completed novel (it’s published posthumously), it’s in some ways her most far-reaching. She extends the venue, which ranges from Somersetshire to Lyme Regis and Bath, and extends the range of major characters beyond the country gentry to include naval officers, a young, desperately poor, ailing widow who is also suffering stoically from a crippling physical disease, and the estimable Nurse Rook. Unlike Austen’s other heroines, Anne Elliot is older and through a tragic error has lost some years of joy. Austen movingly inquires into the nature of love, loss, and the passage of time, while also mounting a comic attack on the pretensions of vanity, chiefly male, and class. Incidentally, the annotations discuss the novel as you read, never divulging or anticipating the plot yet to unfold.
Austen writes of one of her protagonists, Emma, what’s true of all: their two supreme moral strengths are discernment (to see what's actually there) and judgment (what to make of what’s there). Austen expects no less from her readers, but promises that the reward for our keener, braver discernment will be our far greater pleasure.
For more information and for an opportunity to read freely and test drive BookDoors’ nimble search engine, please visit our website, bookdoors.com.
The modest price underscores BookDoors' mission (please see bookdoors.com) to make these works accessible to an audience of widely different experience and expectations. The “Literature in Its Context” series aspires to provide today’s reader with the knowledge an informed reader of 1815 possessed and that Austen took for granted. As you read you'll have, should you wish, an interpretive discussion ofPERSUASION. You’ll also find illustrations, an Austen Glossary of some 1000 words, a time-line that includes cultural, scientific, and technological developments between 1770-1817, a select bibliography, and a brief biography of Austen.
Austen writes in EMMA that "Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken." That's true of PERSUASION as well, and now, nearly two centuries later, "a little mistaken" and "a little disguised" understate the challenge.
At a basic level PERSUASION’S diction can be obscure, for words themselves have changed or disappeared. This In Context edition defines words and phrases such as “freehold,” “insipid,” “disinterested” (not to be confused with uninterested), “pleasure-grounds,” “awful,” and “very low woman.”
A second order of annotation explains the historical background in which Austen roots the novel, including her life and its convergences with her fiction, and the novel’s social and cultural context. This includes the Royal Navy (for which Austen had a special affection owing to two of her brothers’ becoming officers), entail, class, male narcissism and privilege, and the limitations their gender imposes upon women all propel PERSUASION.
A third level of commentary addresses PERSUASION as a work of the literary imagination by one of England’s driest, most ironic novelists. This, Austen’s gentlest novel, spins off from an episode in her life for which she imagines a different conclusion. The title refers in part to our capacity for rationalization and self-delusion, a favorite theme in Austen. Her last completed novel (it’s published posthumously), it’s in some ways her most far-reaching. She extends the venue, which ranges from Somersetshire to Lyme Regis and Bath, and extends the range of major characters beyond the country gentry to include naval officers, a young, desperately poor, ailing widow who is also suffering stoically from a crippling physical disease, and the estimable Nurse Rook. Unlike Austen’s other heroines, Anne Elliot is older and through a tragic error has lost some years of joy. Austen movingly inquires into the nature of love, loss, and the passage of time, while also mounting a comic attack on the pretensions of vanity, chiefly male, and class. Incidentally, the annotations discuss the novel as you read, never divulging or anticipating the plot yet to unfold.
Austen writes of one of her protagonists, Emma, what’s true of all: their two supreme moral strengths are discernment (to see what's actually there) and judgment (what to make of what’s there). Austen expects no less from her readers, but promises that the reward for our keener, braver discernment will be our far greater pleasure.
For more information and for an opportunity to read freely and test drive BookDoors’ nimble search engine, please visit our website, bookdoors.com.
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