"Persuasion" is the last novel of Jane Austen's. As the Napoleonic Wars come to an end in 1814, Admirals and Captains of the Royal Navy are put ashore, their work done. Anne Elliot meets Captain Frederick Wentworth after seven years, by the chance of his sister and brother-in-law renting her father's estate, while she stays for a few months with her married sister, living nearby. They fell in love the first time they met, but she broke off the engagement.

Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. Eight years before our story begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a tale of love and marriage told with irony and insight. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth have met and seperated years before. Their reunion, after the passage or irrecoverable years of their youth, forces a recognition of the false values that drove them apart.

Anne's once-wealthy father - widowed for fourteen years - has fallen into financial ruin and the family is forced to rent their estate and move to more modest accommodations. What's more, the family that moves in to the house is that of Captain Wentworth, who Anne rejected as a suitor years before due to his lack of prospects but who has now risen in the military ranks to become wealthy and prosperous.