Persuasion

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 favourite volume always opened: "ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL. Persuasion begins seven years after the heroine, Anne Elliot, has jilted her lover, Fredrick Wentworth, upon the request of a most beloved mother figure. Although at time of the refusal the man seems an inadequate match, the tables are now turned: as in most Austen novels-the girl is poor, the boy is rich..