Persuasion, Jane Austen's last completed novel, is the quiet, tender and immensely moving story of Anne Elliot's reunion with the man she loves - Captain Frederick Wentworth. Anne is 27 when the novel opens, and still unmarried. Eight years earlier, she had become engaged to the Captain, but her snobbish father's refusal to grant her a dowry and the persuasion of Lady Russell caused her to break the engagement. Angry and hurt, the Captain departed and Anne, whose spirits had never been high, fell into yet deeper melancholy. She is ill used or ignored by her family, and lives a charmless life with her broken heart.

Her father, Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire, is a vain, silly and arrogant man who has squandered the family fortune and is heavily in debt. He is forced to retrench and let Kellynch. It is taken by an Admiral Croft, whose wife Sophie is Captain Wentworth's elder sister. It is thus that Anne and the Captain meet again, but the meeting does not go smoothly. The Captain is still resentful and neither he nor Anne allow the other to see their true feelings. Further pain and misunderstandings follow, yet finally, they reach a happy understanding. It is brought about by the letter Wentworth writes to Anne, and this letter is one of the most beautiful, moving passages ever set down.

Jane Austen was forty when she wrote this masterpiece, and just one year away from her untimely death in 1817. It was published post-humously in 1818. Austen has left us invaluable treasures in her six major novels and the quietly moving "Persuasion" is my favourite of these. If you you likewise love the wonderful story of Anne and her Captain, please join.

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