Jocelyn Harris, from “The Reviser at Work: MS Chapter 10 to Chapters X–XI (1818)” [from A Revolution Almost Beyond Expression: Jane Austen’s Persuasion]
Jocelyn Harris’s Revolution Almost Beyond Expression: Jane Austen’s Persuasion examines the overlapping political, historical, cultural, and intertextual contexts of Austen’s last completed novel. In the portion of the text excerpted here, Harris presents a detailed examination of Austen’s composition and revision process based on two manuscript chapters of Persuasion, tracing the novel’s progress from a “tame, flat manuscript draft” into Austen’s “most passionate” text.