CMP Review 2025-11-12

November 12, 2025

There’s a sweet little Jane Austen quote making the social media rounds:

Autumn — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

Its brevity belies the true brilliance of Miss Austen’s words. Taken from Ch. 10 of Persuasion, a wistful Anne Elliot finds herself in the position of having to bear witness as her long lost love, Captain Wentworth (whose marriage proposal she was encouraged to turn down some years ago), makes merry small talk with the young, pretty, and flirtatious Louisa on a rather long group walk. Gentle, reserved Anne. Austen tells us of Anne’s kindness, constancy, and self-awareness while also stating frankly that “the bloom of youth has left her.”

And this is why her words are so beautifully poignant. Level-headed Anne knows she is no spring rose. She is no longer a girl, she is a woman and the season reflects not only her outward appearance, but her innermost thoughts as she works to occupy her mind. The context of the quote gives it a much richer meaning. Here is the sentence in its entirety:

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.

@rbaburina