And the I'm going to be. Welcome to Snuscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep.

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This episode is brought to you by Notions of Decoram., to start off persuasion, our latest addition to the Friday rotation of four

ongoing stories, we shall read the opening to the book. Or rather, we shall

reread the opening as we have once before read the opening to this novel several years ago now.

This was the last novel fully completed by Jane Austin,

along with being considered her most mature and refined writing. Persuasion

was published in 1817. The story concerns Anne Elliot, a 27-year-old Englishwoman whose family moves to lower their

expenses and reduce their debt by renting their home to an

Admiral and his wife. The novel was well received at its debut, but its greater fame came decades later and continues to this day.

Let's get cozy.

Close your bed. Now take a few deep breaths.

Chapter 1 Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any

book but the baronetage. There he found occupation for an idle hour

and consolation in a distressed one.

There, his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents.

There, any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs,

changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless

creations of the last century. And there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could

read his own history with an interest which never failed.

This was the page at which the favorite volume always opened.

Elliot of Kellynch Hall.

...