Persuasion

Persuasion is the last novel Jane Austen completed, published at the end of 1817 together with Northanger Abbey, with both title pages dated 1818.

The story is set late in 1814, in the months after the Napoleonic wars end and the navy comes home, and it moves between the Elliot estate at Kellynch, the neighbouring families at Uppercross and the city of Bath, where Sir Walter Elliot takes a house to save money while complaining about the address. Anne is the second of his three daughters and the only one who runs the household; her family regards her as useful and unimportant, and the novel is closely concerned with what other people's persuasions cost the person who accepts them. Almost eight years after her broken engagement, she has become careful in a way that everyone trusts and nobody thinks about, and the return of Captain Wentworth to her neighbourhood gives the book its tension and its comedy, since the pair keep meeting in drawing rooms where the only language available is small talk about walks, weather and other people's courting. The novel's reputation grew through the nineteenth century and has never since come off reading lists, and Anne is often noted as the oldest of Austen's heroines.

It was published posthumously, six months after the death of the author.