… 'arriviste' Coles with their commercial background, and in Persuasion , Austen’s final completed novel, the propertied elite, represented by the Elliots and the Dalrymples, retreat entirely from the scene of public sociability into their … aloud and discussed in family groups like her own, with allusions to her writings serving as cultural currency amongst elite groups. But succeeding generations of readers have held Austen’s characters and the author herself in such familiar …