Persuasion
(Large type book)

The story begins seven years after the broken engagement of Anne Elliot to then Commander Frederick Wentworth. Anne, then 19 years old, fell in love and accepted a proposal of marriage from the young naval officer. Wentworth was considered clever, confident, ambitious, and employed, but his low social status made Anne's friends and family view the Commander as an unfavorable partner... In a letter to her niece Fanny Knight in March 1817, Austen wrote that she had a novel "which may appear about a twelvemonth hence." John Murray published Persuasion together with Northanger Abbey in a four-volume set, printed in December 1817 but dated 1818. The first advertisement appeared on December 17, 1817. The Austen family retained copyright of the 1,750 copies, which sold rapidly. The later editions of both were published separately.