LoveReading Says
While Pride and Prejudice may sit at the top of many people’s favourite Jane Austen books, Emma has to be a contender for the title too. For me Emma has a little more bite, it isn’t quite as comfortable a read as Pride and Prejudice, and that makes it more interesting. In terms of lead characters Emma is right up there, she may be headstrong, snobbish, convinced she knows best, yet because of those characteristics, because she isn't perfect, she also feels so very real. Emma is a bright, beautifully written novel with real heart and I love it.
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About Emma
Jane Austens Emma (1816) tells the story of the coming of age of Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, who had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. Typical for the novels time, Emmas transition to womanhood is accomplished through courtship-both of those around her and, ultimately, her own. As in other Austen works, education and courtship go hand in hand, and Emmas process of learning to relinquish the power of having her own way is also a process of falling in love.
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Emma Synopsis
Jane Austens Emma (1816) tells the story of the coming of age of Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, who had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. Typical for the novels time, Emmas transition to womanhood is accomplished through courtship-both of those around her and, ultimately, her own. As in other Austen works, education and courtship go hand in hand, and Emmas process of learning to relinquish the power of having her own way is also a process of falling in love.
However, in Emma this classic plot is both complicated by and reflective of a collection of contemporary issues, assumptions, and anxieties that highlight just how political even the most conventional of courtship plots can be.This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and an extensive collection of historical documents relating to the composition and reception of the novel, the social implications of Englands shift from a rural agrarian to an urban industrial economy, the role of women in provincial society, and the contemporary preoccupation with health and the treatment of illness.
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About Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on 18 July 1817.
As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.
Fellow novelist Katharine McMahon on Jane Austen...
I can't not choose her. And whichever I've read last is always my favourite. The nuance of emotion, the understanding of human nature revealed by Austen constantly delights me. When I reread Sense and Sensibility recently, for the first time Elinor came across as quite prissy and destined to marry a rather spineless husband. I wonder if that was intended?
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