PERSUASION, the last of Jane Austen's novels, is considered by most critics to be her most mature. It is also the most subtle and finely wrought, revealing that "exquisite touch" of which Sir Walter Scott spoke so lovingly.
This story of courtship, marriage, and the moral dilemmas of the country gentry in Regency England is a polished and devastating portrait of that social milieu. "Jane Austen's characters," says V. S. Pritchett, "exactly reproduce what historians have told us about the times... her touch is always light, the wit or idea never killing the life."
"Jane Austen is an uncommon sort of novelist, a novelist of manners with a brilliant ironic wit, an affectionate understanding of the ordinariness of human life.... She wrote of the human comedy with profound art to produce novels unequalled in English literature for technical brilliance, ironic poise, and awareness of the differing claims of personality and of society." – DAVID DAICHES
