Called a 'perfect novel' by Harold Bloom, Persuasion was written while Jane Austen was in failing health. She died soon after its completion, and it was published in an edition with Northanger Abbey in 1818.

In the novel, Anne Elliot, the heroine Austen called 'almost too good for me,' has let herself be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a fine and attractive man without means. Eight years later, Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with a triumphant naval career behind him, a substantial fortune to his name, and an eagerness to wed. Austen explores the complexities of human relationships as they change over time. 'She is a prose Shakespeare,' Thomas Macaulay wrote of Austen in 1842. 'She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.'

Persuasion is the last work of one of the greatest of novelists, the end of a quiet career pursued in anonymity in rural England that produced novels which continue to give pleasure to millions of readers throughout the world.

簡・奧斯丁(1775―1817),英國十九世紀初期傑齣的現實主義小說傢。她齣生在英格蘭漢普郡一個鄉村牧師的傢庭,從小沒有上過正規學校,隻在父母的指導下閱讀瞭大量古典文學作品和流行小說。她終身未婚,二十歲左右開始寫作,先後寫齣六部反映英國鄉紳生活的長篇小說。一八一一年,匿名發錶瞭《理智與情感》,受到好評,以後又接連齣版瞭《傲慢與偏見》(1813)、《曼斯菲爾德莊園》(1814)、《愛瑪》(1815)。她逝世後的第二年,《諾桑覺寺》和《勸導》同時問世,並且第一次署上作者的真名。