Her father is a vain, foolish baronet, obsessed with his lineage but so careless with money that he is obliged to quit his ancestral seat. Her sister is a fretful invalid with a good-natured husband and two disobedient sons. She herself falls in love with a handsome naval officer, and he with her, but her proud family consider his status and prospects inadequate. Heartbroken, the lovers part: he goes to sea while she leads a forlorn life at home. Years later he returns with a fortune in prize money, and after further misunderstandings he claims her as his bride. This is the story of Anne Elliot in Jane Austen s Persuasion. It is also the story true this time of Katherine Bisshopp, the clever, beautiful daughter of an old Sussex family. Drawing on Katherine s letters and journals and other family papers, this book relates the joys and anxieties of her youth, her harrowing eleven-year courtship with George Pechell, and their happy and prosperous union, which produced two daughters and a son. Splinter chapters draw parallels with Jane Austen s portrait of society and reveal the extraordinary coincidences of character and circumstance between Katherine Bisshopp and Anne Elliot, while the real woman s experiences after her marriage are seen as a possible future for the fictional heroine. The reality of history and the deeper truth of literature together yield a detailed picture of the age.
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