Persuasion

Everyone has their Austen, and this is mine. Sparer, more savage - and also more poignant than Pride and Prejudice, this is a novel that tells us wisely and wittily about the nature of romantic entanglements and the follies of being human. It isn't riven with the deep, muscular ironies of, say, Emma, but there is something about the dry lightness of Persuasion that is deceptive. It stays with you long after you've read it

Nigella Lawson

I worship all of Austen's novels, but if I have to choose one over the others, I plump for the autumnal pleasures of Persuasion. This is the last work Austen completed before her death in 1817, and it is rather more tender and melancholy in tone than the novels that preceded it. I read it once or twice a year, whenever I feel in need of a good cry

Zoe Heller

A subtle and elegiac novel - more heartfelt than some of her earlier romances and with a truly appealing heroine

Joanna Trollope

Female self-worth could have been invented by Jane Austen. No wonder we still value her

Germaine Greer, Guardian

It is a sort of a private novel. In the heroine, Anne Elliot, we have glimpses of Austen and what happened to her; the lost romance and the lost youth

Julian Fellowes, Sunday Express

In Persuasion, Jane Austen picks up the pen to tell us who we are and what we want

Independent