Persuasion: An Annotated Edition (Harvard University Press, $35, 360 pp.) edited by Robert Morrison is a handsome volume graced with colorful illustrations. Morrison's commentary not only includes new insights into Jane Austen's story about the romance of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, but also delves deep into details of life at the time. For readers who always wondered – and even for those who never thought to – Morrison decodes Wentworth's nautical style of speaking and explains why a 19th-century inn wouldn't have fresh food delivered. ("In November they seem to have stopped ordering for guests altogether, as the social season had passed and they had 'no expectation of company,' " Morrison writes.) For lovers of Austen, it's a deep dive into both her fiction and her world.
