Persuasion

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope . . . I have loved none but you.” Persuasion narrates the emotional journey of its protagonist, Anne Elliot, who chances upon Captain Wentworth, a suitor she was persuaded to reject seven years earlier, and whose reappearance causes her to reflect on her past decisions and contemplate her marital future. Vividly depicting the society holiday towns of Lyme Regis and Bath, and infused with its author’s trademark wit, Austen’s last completed novel, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, is an entertaining and enduring account of the dilemmas facing young women in the early nineteenth century.