I did not omg. That’s awful and now I’m sad about it, Ms. Austen whyyyyy

It is! Persuasion is also my favorite of hers, but there is def lots and lots of buildup and then “they live happily ever after - as long as there isn’t another war” which is like…. Oh.

I was going to add this to my reply as well, but then I got to thinking and I couldn’t remember whether NA was even more abrupt than the rest or not. But I think this is definitely likely to be the largest part of it! Especially because her stories are as much or more about the social absurdities and quirks and journeys of the people in them than they are strictly about the romance.

Based on what I’ve read, most novels weren’t back then. Serialization of novels probably was a thing, but as far as I can tell it became the really popular thing to do in England in the mid 1800s, after Dickens published his Pickwick Paper stories that way. Austen’s contemporaries weren’t serializing their works either, they were publishing them as full novels.

If I remember correctly, NA was one of Austen’s earlier novels, so it could in part be due to her still growing into her style and her craft, which probably includes knowing how to satisfactorily wrap everything up.

There’s also the possibility (though this is 100% a guess and I can’t say for sure) that the types of novels NA was both emulating and poking some fun at (the sort of exaggerated gothic romance type novels Catherine was so fond of reading) have equally abrupt “and they lived happily ever after” endings, so it was all part of her matching that style? But like I said, that’s 100% a guess on my part.