801 Persuasion by Jane Austen (Revisited)

As the History of Literature Podcast Tour rolls through literary England, Jacke and Emma are revisiting some past episodes with connections to what they're seeing and doing. Today, they're in Bath, which naturally means spending some time with Jane Austen. In this episode, which first ran in April 2023, Jacke considers Austen's Persuasion, a novel of missed opportunities and second chances. Why did Harold Bloom call this "the perfect novel"? And why did Virginia Woolf say, "In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she supposed"? (This...