Persuasion

A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own); there could be nothing in them now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, persuaded by her friend Lady Russell, she broke off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. Now older and wiser, the decision has haunted her along with the memory of the man she loved. When fate throws the two together again, in very different circumstances, Anne will learn how deeply the past can still wound and what can be endured for love. As she finds herself again torn between the demands of family and social convention she must learn to find her own judgement in a sea of influence. Jane Austen’s final novel is arguably her most moving, tender and poignant. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. View other titles in Penguin’s Clothbound Classics Collection. Romantic, witty, acerbic and endlessly popular, Jane Austen’s novels are amongst the most revered, relevant and consistently readable novels in English Literature. Subtly different in tone, they range from the Gothic satire of Northanger Abbey, the drama of Pride and Prejudice and the razor-sharp observation of Emma to the poignancy and tenderness of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Persuasion.