Persuasion

Everyone has their Austen, and this is mine. Sparer, more savage - and also more poignant than Pride and Prejudice, this is a novel that tells us wisely and wittily about the nature of romantic entanglements and the follies of being human. It isn’t riven with the deep, muscular ironies of, say, Emma, but there is something about the dry lightness of Persuasion that is deceptive. It stays with you long after you’ve read it – Nigella LawsonI worship all of Austen’s novels, but if I have to choose one over the others, I plump for the autumnal pleasures of Persuasion. This is the last work Austen completed before her death in 1817, and it is rather more tender and melancholy in tone than the novels that preceded it. I read it once or twice a year, whenever I feel in need of a good cry – Zoe HellerA subtle and elegiac novel - more heartfelt than some of her earlier romances and with a truly appealing heroine – Joanna TrollopeFemale self-worth could have been invented by Jane Austen. No wonder we still value her – Germaine Greer * Guardian *It is a sort of a private novel. In the heroine, Anne Elliot, we have glimpses of Austen and what happened to her; the lost romance and the lost youth – Julian Fellowes * Sunday Express *In Persuasion, Jane Austen picks up the pen to tell us who we are and what we want * Independent *

Jane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty-two years old. It was originally called First Impressions and was initially rejected by the publishers and only published in 1813 after much revision. She published four of her novels in her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were both published posthumously in 1818.

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