简・奥斯丁(1775―1817),英国十九世纪初期杰出的现实主义小说家。她出生在英格兰汉普郡一个乡村牧师的家庭,从小没有上过正规学校,只在父母的指导下阅读了大量古典文学作品和流行小说。她终身未婚,二十岁左右开始写作,先后写出六部反映英国乡绅生活的长篇小说。一八一一年,匿名发表了《理智与情感》,受到好评,以后又接连出版了《傲慢与偏见》(1813)、《曼斯菲尔德庄园》(1814)、《爱玛》(1815)。她逝世后的第二年,《诺桑觉寺》和《劝导》同时问世,并且第一次署上作者的真名。

Called a 'perfect novel' by Harold Bloom, Persuasion was written while Jane Austen was in failing health. She died soon after its completion, and it was published in an edition with Northanger Abbey in 1818.

In the novel, Anne Elliot, the heroine Austen called 'almost too good for me,' has let herself be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a fine and attractive man without means. Eight years later, Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with a triumphant naval career behind him, a substantial fortune to his name, and an eagerness to wed. Austen explores the complexities of human relationships as they change over time. 'She is a prose Shakespeare,' Thomas Macaulay wrote of Austen in 1842. 'She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.'

Persuasion is the last work of one of the greatest of novelists, the end of a quiet career pursued in anonymity in rural England that produced novels which continue to give pleasure to millions of readers throughout the world.