Central Skagit Library District

Austen's last completed novel, Persuasion, is slower in pace and more melancholy in tone than her earlier work. Look closely at two defining features of the story: its focus on age and aging and its more direct approach to real-life political events of the time. Better appreciate the many complex dimensions of Austen's final published work.

"In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas -- and a new unrest -- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs...