The most intense of Austen's novels, Persuasion begins by painfully reversing courtship tropes but transforms into a rapturous romantic comedy.

A powerful portrait of grief triumphantly overcome, Persuasion is Austen's most passionate work: more than any previous novel, it concentrates on the intense inner life of the heroine. It opens with Anne Elliot lamenting lost love in a painful reversal of the courtship novel; it then transforms into a rapturous romantic comedy. Against a dysfunctional gentry family corroded by snobbishness, the novel pits professional self-made naval men marked by energy and domestic virtues: the heroine's future lies with them rather than with the landed class into which she was born. Persuasion is the only Austen novel that ends with the heroine lacking a settled home. Uniquely in Austen's oeuvre, an earlier part of the text survives. This edition includes a transcript, allowing readers to glimpse Austen's creative process. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate the cultural, historical and literary context, bringing Jane Austen's world to life.