Persuasion

'Persuasion' was Jane Austen's last novel, and certainly her most romantic in tone. She uses the story of Anne Elliot - forced by social convention to give up the man she dearly loved - to cast a critical and often satirical eye upon the manners and mores of middle-class English society during the early 1800s, with her most pointed barbs reserved for the canting, narrow-minded 'landed gentry'. Austen's witty, ironic portrayal of life in this restrictive and restricting society has enthralled generations of readers and earned her a place among the great names of English literature.