Austen's final novel, Persuasion, tells the story of Anne Elliot, a unmarried and aging woman who reencounters her old fianc , Frederick Wentworth, whom she had been pressured to reject a decade earlier. Now a successful naval officer, Captain Wentworth is determined to take any eligible woman as a bride-except Anne Elliot.

This humorous and moving story of lost love and reconciliation is Austen's final testament to the universality of love and the possibility of happiness it offers to every person.