Jane Austen's beloved and subtly subversive final novel of romantic tension and second chances. Now a motion picture from Netflix starring Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, and a TikTok Book Club Pick. At twenty-­seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. “Critics, especially [recently], value Persuasion highly, as the author’s ‘most deeply felt fiction,’ ‘the novel which in the end the experienced reader of Jane Austen puts at the head of the list....' Anne wins back Wentworth and wins over the reader; we may, like him, end up thinking Anne’s character ‘perfection itself.’” –from the Introduction by Judith Terry JANE AUSTEN  (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. She is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey .  GILLIAN BEER  is King Edward Professor of English at the University of Cambridge and President of Clare Hall. Chapter I Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage;there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in adistressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration andrespect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents;there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairschanged naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned overthe almost endless creations of the last century—and there,if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own historywith an interest which never failed—this was the page at whichthe favourite volume always opened: ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL. Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth,daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county ofGloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth,born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son,November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791. Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands;but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information ofhimself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth—"Married, Dec 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of CharlesMusgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,"—and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on whichhe had lost his wife. Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family,in the usual terms: how it had been first settled in Cheshire;how mentioned in Dugdale—serving the office of High Sheriff,representing a borough in three successive parliaments,exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first yearof Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married;forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding withthe arms and motto:"Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the countyof Somerset," and Sir Walter's hand-writing again in this finale: "Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson ofthe second Sir Walter." Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character;vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsomein his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man.Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did;nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted withthe place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beautyas inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot,who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respectand devotion. His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment;since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior characterto any thing deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman,sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might bepardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot,had never required indulgence