Article on the novels of Jane Austen. The part I found most interesting was the suggestion at the beginning that the reason Persuasion has a different tone and less subtle characterization than her other books is that she didn't have time to finish it before she died. There' s a quote from Virginia Woolf (on a different, unfinished work of Austen's): '"the stiffness and bareness of the first chapters" suggest that "she was one of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and atmosphere."'
I want to read Persuasion and then come back and read this article again.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever read the last book in the "Little House" series? Also deeply different in tone from the books that came before -- starker and more serious. I think I read somewhere that it was because Laura Ingalls Wilder never finished it (can't remember if she died or just lost interest).
I barely remember the Little House series. I doubt I ever read all of them, and I never had the urge to go back and read them.
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