num_pages: 256
description: In this, Jane Austen's last novel, appears her most memorable heroine—Anne Elliot, a young woman of perfect breeding, profound depth of emotion, and unswerving integrity. These virtues, however, exist in a world—the world of country gentry in Regency England—in which shallowness and hypocrisy thrive and ever threaten to win dominion. It is Anne's poised confrontation with these forces, as she vies for the affections of the man she loves, which gives shape to a work which displays Jane Austen's rich maturity of vision and her new-found sense of human potential. Blending sharp wit and warm sympathy, stylistic brilliance and tender insight, Persuasion represents the crowning achievement of Jane Austen's career, the final unfolding of her matchless art. As Marvin Mudrick writes: “The proper parochial society that for a quarter of a century Jane Austen has been laughing at and amusing, despising and defending, at all events copiously memorializing, comes to its late flower in the unassuming grace, the finely balanced feelings, the secret strength and charm of character, of Anne Elliot.”With an Afterword by Marvin Mudrick(Back Cover)Written at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Persuasion is a tale of love, heartache and the determination of one woman as she strives to reignite a lost love. Anne Elliot is persuaded by her friends and family to reject a marriage proposal from Captain Wentworth because he lacks in fortune and rank. More than seven years later, when he returns home from the Navy, Anne realizes she still has strong feelings for him, but Wentworth only appears to have eyes for a friend of Anne’s. Moving, tender, but intrinsically Austen in style, with its satirical portrayal of the vanity of society in eighteenth-century England, Persuasion celebrates enduring love and hope.
language: English
title: Persuasion
titlecomplete: Persuasion
characters: Captain Harville, Lady Russell, Admiral Croft, Mary Musgrove, Anne Elliot, Penelope Clay, Sophia Croft, Louisa Musgrove, William Elliot, Captain James Benwick, Captain Frederick Wentworth, Charles Musgrove, Mrs. Smith, Sir Walter Elliot, Henrietta Musgrove, Elizabeth Elliot
genres: Fiction, Historical, Classic Literature, Romance, Literature, Classics, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Audiobook
ratings_count: 673280
places: Lyme Regis, England, England, Bath, Somerset, England, Somerset, England, United Kingdom
publisher: Signet Classic