书名：Persuasion劝导
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1120
作者：Jane Austen
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2008
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451530837
商品尺寸：10.7 x 2 x 17 cm
包装：平装
页数：298 （以实物为准）

Persuasion《劝导》是英国女作家简•奥斯汀所创作的最后一部小说。写于《爱玛》发表之后。由于这个时期作者的思想受到了当时同时期的浪漫主义作家拜伦，雪莱，济慈等人的影响，写作风格较早期的作品如《傲慢与偏见》和《理智与情感》有所变化。《理智与情感》中，作者趋于传递理智需战胜个人情感的理念；而在《劝导》当中，“过于理智”的弊端则被完完全全地展露无遗。两部作品相辅相成，脍炙人口，更曾被改编为电影和舞台剧，并被BBC改成电视剧，取得了不俗的反响。
推荐理由：
1.各大推荐书单榜上有名，值得文学爱好者收藏和研读；
2.与奥斯汀其他作品有所对比，人物、场景设置堪称完美；
3.该书创作背景为英国社会转变时期，读者可从独特的视角了解当时的社会情形；
4.英国当代女性作家、《牛津英国文学辞典》主编玛格丽特·德拉布尔（Margaret Drabble）作序，小说家、普利策奖、美国国家图书奖候选人Diane Johnson写后记；
5.全书印刷清晰，体积轻巧，适合随身携带，随时阅读。
Jane Austen once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work.Through her piercing social observation and subtly subversive style, Jane Austen drew from ordinary circumstances to produce extraordinary works of English literature. Known by many as a novelist who focuses on marriage plots and happy endings, Austen's works can more deeply be understood to be a study of the complex class and gender relations which underscored early-nineteenth century English middle-class society.
Reviews:
“Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values.”—Virginia Woolf
“Critics, especially [recently], value Persuasion highly, as the author’s ‘most deeply felt fiction,’ ‘the novel which in the end the experienced reader of Jane Austen puts at the head of the list.’… Anne wins back Wentworth and wins over the reader; we may, like him, end up thinking Anne’s character ‘perfection itself.’”—from the Introduction by Judith Terry

Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Jane Austen(1775-1817) was born in Hampshire, England, to George Austen, a rector, and his wife, Cassandra. Like many girls of her day, she was educated at home, where she began her literary career by writing parodies and skits for the amusement of her large family. Although Austen did not marry, she did have several suitors and once accepted a marriage proposal, but only for an evening. Although Austen never lived apart from her family, her work shows a worldly and wise sensibility. Her novels includeSense and Sensibility(1811),Pride and Prejudice(1813),Mansfield Park(1814),Emma(1815), andNorthanger AbbeyandPersuasion, published together posthumously in 1818.
Margaret Drabbleis the highly acclaimed novelist, biographer, and editor ofThe Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her novels includeThe Gates of Ivory,The Seven Sisters, andThe Red Queen.She lives in London.
Diane Johnsonis theauthor of ten novels,includingLe DivorceandL’Affaire, two books of essays, two biographies, and the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s classic filmThe Shinning.She has been a finalist twice for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Chapter One

SIR WALTER Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century-and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed-this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL

Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, Nov. 5, 1789; Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791.

Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth-"married, Dec. 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,"-and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.