Jane Austen finished Persuasion in August 1816 and died in July 1817. The book was published, with Northanger Abbey, after her death. She was forty-one. Persuasion is her last finished novel and is — by general agreement — her quietest and her most adult.
England, 1814. Eight years ago Anne Elliot, twenty-seven, broke off her engagement to a poor young naval officer named Frederick Wentworth because the family she loved persuaded her it was wrong. He has come back from the Napoleonic wars rich, famous, and not yet married. The wars are over, the navy is on shore, and the man she sent away is the man Sir Walter Elliot now considers an excellent match. She has spent eight years alone with her regret. He has spent eight years cultivating his anger. They meet again in November in a country drawing-room near her sister's house. He bows to her stiffly. He tells his sister, in private, that he found her so altered he should not have known her.
The B2 adaptation runs across eighteen chapters and keeps every famous scene: the carriage on the road from Uppercross, the fall on the Cobb at Lyme, the concert in Bath, Mrs Smith's revelation about Mr Elliot, the conversation about whether men or women love longer, the famous letter (You pierce my soul), and the gravel walk on which Anne Elliot, at twenty-seven, accepts Frederick Wentworth a second time.
Austen's English is precise, ironic, and almost without difficulty at the sentence level — she wrote in a clean Regency standard that has aged less than almost any other prose of her century. The challenge of Persuasion at B2 is what is held back rather than what is said: the slights, the corrections, the small acts of attention that mean everything. A B2 reader has the patience for that economy in a way an earlier-level reader might not.
Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Persuasion was originally written in English, but you choose your reading language when you start.
B2. Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
Persuasion is rated B2, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.
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