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click to listen to audioJane Austen (1775–1817)
Persuasion c. July 1816
Egerton MS. 3038
By permission of The British Library

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The British Library, London
United Kingdom

Jane Austen's Persuasion
c.1816

Jane Austen (1775–1817) lived all her life in the quiet English countryside; she was never apart from her relatives, and had few dealings with others outside her circle. Her novels are almost exclusively concerned with the romantic courtships and gossip of England's provincial middle class. Her sympathetic and shrewdly observed characterisations, however, have meant that few authors in the English language have been so enduringly popular.

Persuasion was Austen's last novel, completed in 1816 and published the year after her death. This 1816 draft of the final two chapters (she later expanded them into three) is all that survives of the original manuscript. Austen chose to write on paper of an unusual size and shape so that she could hide her work if anyone suddenly entered the room; like the novel's central character, Anne, perhaps she tended to hide her true self from the world. It may be a mistake to identify Austen with her character, but their similarity of circumstance may explain why Anne remains such a likable character.