Persuasion
Jane Austen (1775–1817), 1817
★ 4.15 from 816k ratings on Goodreads
A woman of twenty-seven meets again the man she was talked out of marrying, and begins to wonder whether prudence was ever a virtue. Quiet, autumnal and closely observed, with a steady pace and a voice that is witty even when the longing turns painful.
Feels like longing, wonder and melancholy. About love, nature and art.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy patient, inward novels about regret and second chances, told with dry wit and close attention to social manners. Be prepared for a leisurely pace and less sparkle than Austen’s better-known books; some readers find it slow and less engaging than her others.
Why read it
It offers a grown-up look at love after disappointment, and Anne’s quiet endurance gives the story its weight. Read it for the wit and the ache.
Pages from the book
The particular loneliness of a room shared with someone you once loved.
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples), there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. The guilt of being happy when you have no right to be.
No, it was not regret which made Anne’s heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy, senseless joy! The caution of youth, and the romance that comes too late.
How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that overanxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. What readers say
Readers often describe the novel as tender and heartbreaking, with yearning and second-chance love at its emotional core. Some are deeply moved by regret and quiet endurance, while others find it slow or less engaging than Austen’s other novels.
Jane Austen.Austen wrote Persuasion while ill and died before it appeared; it was published five months later, dated 1818, and she never saw it in print.
Books that feel like this
More by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen, 1813
A sharp-eyed comedy about money, manners and misjudgment, in which a quick-witted woman and a proud man keep being wrong about each other. Funnier and more cutting than its reputation suggests.
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen, 1811
Two sisters, one who feels everything and one who shows nothing, discover what each kind of restraint costs and conceals.
Emma
Jane Austen, 1815
A clever, rich, bored young woman decides to arrange her neighbours' love lives, and gets nearly everything wrong. Austen's funniest, most merciless book about self-knowledge.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Persuasion for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy patient, inward novels about regret and second chances, told with dry wit and close attention to social manners. Be prepared for a leisurely pace and less sparkle than Austen’s better-known books; some readers find it slow and less engaging than her others.
- What is Persuasion like?
- Quiet, autumnal and closely observed, with a steady pace and a voice that is witty even when the longing turns painful. Feels like longing, wonder and melancholy. About love, nature and art.
- What should I read after Persuasion?
- If you liked Persuasion, try Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë).
A taste of the feed
Cold enough that the sky stops being any comfort at all.
Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.
Great Expectations · Charles Dickens
The strange calm that arrives when a lie comes out perfectly.
Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her.
Anna Karenina · Leo Tolstoy
Looking at someone you shouldn't, knowing precisely what it will cost.
No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
Jane Eyre · Charlotte Brontë
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