Quote
By Jane Austen
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
- Source
- Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (first edition, four volumes), 1818 · Persuasion, volume IV of the set, chapter XI, p. 269
- Read at
- Internet Archive (University of Illinois scan of the first edition, London: John Murray, 1818)
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About this quote
Spoken by Anne Elliot to Captain Harville in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, as printed in the first edition (London: John Murray, title page dated 1818), where the book fills the third and fourth volumes of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. They are arguing about whether men or women stay faithful longer. Later editions change the punctuation of this sentence.