锘縒hen Deresiewicz returned to "Persuasion," he was in the middle of writing his dissertation and friends had scattered to various jobs. He was feeling isolated, much like "Persuasion" heroine Anne Elliot. After being pressured into breaking off her engagement with the man she loved because her family thought he had no social standing, Anne was living at home with a father and sister who didn't think much of her opinion and usually belittled her. When Anne goes to a house in Lyme and sees her former fiance's group of friends, she thinks to herself that these people would have been her circle. 锘緿eresiewicz also felt that he was lacking a group of friends like he'd had in the past and when, through a mutual acquaintance, he got to know a group who often went to a house by the water, it reminded him of the circle of people Anne became acquainted with in Lyme. "Like the Harvilles, he accommodated as many friends as wanted to come, and anyone who came became a friend," Deresiewicz wrote of the house's host. "Like the Harvilles, in short, he made you feel at home."
