It is 200 years since Jane Austen died. During her lifetime she achieved modest success as a published author, and her reputation and popularity grew in the years that followed; she is now considered one of the greatest English writers of all time. At the time of her death in July 1817, she had published four novels, leaving two further books ready for publication: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion appeared together in December 1817, accompanied by a short biography of the author, written by her brother, Henry Austen. Here, for the first time, Jane Austen is named as novelist; in her lifetime her works were issued anonymously.
Though Jane Austen’s novels all contain within them a love story, Persuasion is her most romantic — even more so than Pride and Prejudice, with which it is often compared. At 27 years of age, Anne Elliot is Austen’s oldest heroine. When we are introduced to her in the novel’s opening pages, we are told that she was very much in love eight years before but parted from the man she loved and has not seen him since. Her older friend and mother-figure, Lady Russell, persuaded her at that time not to throw herself away on a young man whose financial prospects were so uncertain: Frederick Wentworth was a sailor and England was at war. Now, eight years later, he has returned from sea. Captain Wentworth is rich and successful and looking to settle down. There are plenty of pretty young girls to choose from. Whom will he marry?
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