I am unrelentingly grateful that JA rewrote the ending. To have never read “the letter” is a quite shocking thought in itself but I hardly feel qualified to critique JA more than she does herself so I will acquiesce to her assessment but that I cannot be quite as hard on her as she is on herself. I wanted to submit the quote below because the thought of her working while ill and then rallying to the rewrite is emotional for me—is this the choicest gift of Heaven at work? I know that everything she wrote she probably revised again and again until she felt it was right but as this is the last finished, probably routine in her own mind, it is still more poignant to me.

“JA began Persuasion, the last novel she was to complete, on 8 August 1815…The spring of 1816 also saw the insidious onset of Jane’s own terminal illness. It may be in part a consequence of these unhappy events that Persuasion is shorter than her other works and also of a more somber tone. Jane first finished it on 18 July 1816, but she was not satisfied with the original version of how the lovers’ reunion is brought about, as her nephew and biographer, James Edward Austen-Leigh, remembered: She thought it tame and flat, and was desirious of producing something better. This weighted upon her mind, the more so probably on account of the weak state of her health; so that one night she retired to rest in very low spirits. But such depression was little in accordance with her nature, and was soon shaken off. The next morning she awoke to more cheerful views and brighter inspiration; the sense of power revived; and imagination resumed its course.” (Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels, page 278)