Instances

'Persuasion' is the story of Anne Elliot, intelligent daughter of a spendthrift baronet, and her love for Frederick Wentworth. She is persuaded to refuse his proposition of marriage and spends seven unhappy years until he re-enters her life.

The illness which curtailed Jane Austens relatively short life may have imparted a mellow quality to her writing for certainly this is a gentler more reflective observation of loves vagaries and follies than her earlier work. It has been suggested that she modelled her heroine on her own characte...

When she was young and beautiful Anne Elliot fell in love with a dashing, but poor naval officer. Her family considered him beneath her and persuaded her to break off the match. Eight years later, when the novel begins, Anne is well past the bloom of her youth. Until Wentworth, now a celebrated c...

The last novel completed by Jane Austen before her death, Persuasion is often thought to reflect on the author's own lost love. Sir Walter Elliot has raised his three daughters with his own sense of haughty pride. Elizabeth, at twenty-eight, has found no one good enough to marry, while Mary has,...