Persuasion
Jane Austen · 1817
Austen's most emotionally raw novel. A second-chance love story about Anne Elliot, who was once persuaded out of love and has spent years regretting it. The letter Captain Wentworth writes ("I am half agony, half hope") is the most romantic passage in English literature. A quieter Austen, and her most devastating.
The case against
Austen died before she could give it a final polish, and it shows. Mrs Smith exists to deliver a dossier on Mr Elliot's villainy in one indigestible chapter; the Musgrove sisters blur; Anne is so patiently right about everything that watching her wait is the whole plot. Slighter and slower than Emma, whatever its defenders insist.
Romance · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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