Anne Elliot, persuaded at nineteen to refuse Captain Wentworth, meets him again eight years later, still unmarried, still in love. Austen wrote this as her last completed novel, finished just months before her death. The prose has the characteristic wit, but also a new depth; Anne has suffered in ways Elizabeth Bennet never did. The late-blooming love is tender and hard-won. The letter Wentworth writes near the end is possibly the greatest love letter in English fiction. You pierce my soul. Austen died at forty-one. The novel was published posthumously. The persuasion was wrong. The love survived anyway.