Persuasion

Jane Austen, 1817

A-level set text AQA A-level (Lit A)

Anne Elliot faces renewed contact with a man she once refused, amid a family preoccupied with rank and appearances.

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Length: 24 chapters
Reading time: About 5 hr 50 min
Words: 83,216

About the book

Sir Walter Elliot finds reassurance in the record of his own ancestry, even while his household's finances demand attention. His daughter Anne receives far less consideration. A change in the family's arrangements creates the possibility of meeting a man whose proposal she once declined.

Austen places the pressure of past decisions beside the small discomforts of present company. Anne's quiet observations give the novel a different pace from her father's confident self-regard. Conversations, visits and practical choices raise questions about whose advice deserves trust and whether judgement can become more independent with experience.

On these lists

Courtship and marriage

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Jane Austen died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.