By Jane Austen — published posthumously, December 1817
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older — the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.
The last novel Austen completed before her death — the most autumn-coloured of her books, the most pierced by regret. Anne Elliot, twenty-seven and fading in the eyes of her vain father, broke off her engagement to a young naval officer eight years before. Now Captain Wentworth has returned, prosperous, attractive, evidently unforgiving. Whether Austen’s last word on love is happiness or disappointment is the work of the novel to settle.
Austen finished Persuasion in August 1816, eleven months before her death. Her brother Henry oversaw publication of the novel together with Northanger Abbey, in a four-volume set issued in late December 1817 by John Murray, with a memorial preface by Henry himself revealing for the first time that the novelist of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma had been his sister. The novel’s working title was The Elliots; the published title was Henry’s.
Pride and Prejudice · Sense and Sensibility · Emma · Mansfield Park · Northanger Abbey