Set in South West England in the early years of the 19th century ("the summer of 1814"), Persuasion's action begins in the Somerset countryside, around the fictional Kellynch Hall and Uppercross.

 

 

Somerset is a hilly, rural county, home to the town of Glastonbury, known for its famous yearly music festival and its associations with the legendary King Arthur.

Famed for its stunning examples of neoclassical architecture, Bath was originally a Roman city called Aquae Sulis ('the waters of Sulis').

 

                           

 

By the late 18th century, it had become a spa resort for pleasure and health. One went to Bath to 'take the waters', a reference to the famous Roman Baths that were said to improve the health of those who bathed in them or drank from them at the Pump Room.  

Jane Austen lived unhappily in Bath for part of her life (1800-1806); she preferred the countryside, and her stay ended with the death of her father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 At one point Jane Austen lived in Gay Street, where Admiral and Mrs Croft make their Bath home. The house, number 40, is now the Jane Austen Centre.

Gay Street is near The Circus, famous for its Georgian architecture. The Circus was completed less than fifty years before Jane Austen's Persuasion.

 

 Lyme Regis lies on the Dorset coast, 25 miles from Exeter. It is known as the 'pearl of Dorset' for its picturesque town and beaches and its setting among beautiful, fossil-studded cliffs.

 

 

For a small seaside town, Lyme Regis has attracted more than its share of historical and literary associations. Besides the Jane Austen connections, Lyme Regis is also the setting for the 1969 novel by John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, which was made into a film starring Meryl Streep. Its historical interest comes from its past as a haven for smugglers, as the launching point for the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion in 1685, as the point at which news of the Battle of Trafalgar first arrived in England, and as a key location for the scientific discovery of fossils.

 

 

Jane Austen visited Lyme Regis with her parents and her sister Cassandra in 1803 and 1804. At the time it was a fashionable sea spa. An incident involving a broken teapot led Austen to meet the now-famous Mary Anning, Lyme Regis's pre-eminent fossil hunter and paleontologist.

 

  Taunton is the county town of Somerset, and its most populated city. It gets its name from the nearby Tone river. This would have been a central place to asks questions and gain information about the county in Sir Walter's day.