Jane Austen

[Valandil]

That's interesting GM. I may have to pick up that Companion Book myself. I am somewhat familiar with British Navy of that time from other readings - mostly Horatio Hornblower series by CS Forester. He gives a lot of information (along the way) about the kinds of ships, sailing, navy life, advancement and prize money. So that helped me connect with those kinds of things in Persuasion and Mansfield Park.

ceelee - I'm not sure where I would rank Persuasion. I loved P&P when I first read it, then read it again. I read Emma next, and debated with myself whether it was even better. Then, reading all the others in succession, it's just really hard to rate them against one another. I've enjoyed them all. There were some differences that stand out to me in Persuasion though:

* I think there's less dialog and a lot more narration.
* The characters are more isolated. Anne is very much alone. And we don't REALLY get inside Captain Wentworth's head until the very end of the book. Otherwise, we only have Anne's analysis of what's going on. In many ways, that's very realistic as we move toward a relationship ourselves though.
* There were a few places where things were a little unclear, some sentences I wasn't quite sure of, some spellings I wasn't sure of (unless they've changed... possible). I wonder if some of these things (and maybe even the preference for narration over dialog) were due to Jane's illness.
* At a couple points, I started to wonder if there were somewhat subtle sexuality aspects - and I wonder if they're in some of her other books and I've missed them. I also wonder if the nickname for 'Richard' was already used in slang reference to the male anatomy 200 years ago, and if that's what she was getting at in one point.

Just some musings...

Rian - are you sure about the 'up' for London? I've never noticed that anywhere before. Jerusalem of course, both because it was The Holy City, and because it was physically on high ground, but I hadn't heard that about London.