After years apart, unmarried Anne Elliot, the heroine Jane Austen called "almost too good for me," encounters the dashing naval officer others persuaded her to reject, as he now courts the rash and younger Louisa Musgrove. Superbly drawn, these characters and those of Anne's prideful father, Sir Walter, the scheming Mrs. Clay, and the duplicitous William Elliot, heir to Kellynch Hall, become luminously alive-so much so that the poet Tennyson, visiting historic Lyme Regis, where a pivotal scene occurs, exclaimed: "Don't talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove Fell!"