Persuasion and Poems

Jane Austen’s last novel, “Persuasion,” tells the story of Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth. Seven years after Anne rejects the man she loves after a family friend persuades her that he isn’t a good enough match for her, Frederick Wentworth returns to England looking for a wife.

Jane Austen completed the manuscript of “Persuasion” in the summer of 1816. It was not published until after her death.

Jane Austen’s poems were mostly occasional, light comic verses written to celebrate events, like a marriage or the birth of a child, to entertain family and friends.

This delightful selection, with an introduction by Alison Larkin, ranges from “This Little Bag,” which Austen wrote on a tiny piece of paper placed in the pocket of a tiny bag she gave to her niece on Christmas night 1792, to “When Winchester Races,” written in July 1817, just three days before her death.