If you like dunking on useless aristocrats, novels brimming with the psychological tension of unfulfilled desire, and ships, have we got a great one for you! Persuasion (1818) is Jane Austen’s last completed novel, and as it involves boats, it is obviously Tristan’s favorite. We talk changing class forms, the novel’s interest in bodies and time, and capital-H History as both a lens onto the personal and the national/global. Katie also tells us what the U.S. version of a knighthood is – having a rest stop named for you on the New Jersey Turnpike.

We read the magnificent Oxford edition with notes and introduction by friend-of-the-pod Deidre Shauna Lynch. There’s so much excellent Austen scholarship, but you can start with Lynch’s The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning or another favorite of ours, Claudia L. Johnson’s Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel.

Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at betterreadpodcast@gmail.com. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.