Jane Austen

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Nicola Bradbury, University of Reading. Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', but Emma is irresistible. 'Handsome, clever, and rich', Emma is also an 'imaginist', 'on fire with speculation and foresight'. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married. Her matchmaking maps out relationships that Jane Austen ironically tweaks into a clearer perspective. Judgement and imagination are matched in games the reader too can enjoy, and the end is a triumph of understanding.

Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco University. 'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival. This book, the first of Austen’s novels to be published, remains as fresh a cautionary tale today as it ever was.

Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent. Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her. In this, her first full-length novel, Austen also fixes her sharp, ironic gaze on other kinds of contemporary novel, especially the Gothic school made famous by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine's reading becomes intertwined with her social and romantic adventures, adding to the uncertainties and embarrassments she must undergo before finding happiness.

Introduction and Notes by Dr Ian Littlewood, University of Sussex. Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim - that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband. With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.

First published in 1814, this is a study of three families - the Bertrams, the Crawfords and the Prices - in which Jane Austen uses the unlikely heroine, Fanny Price, to explore the social and moral values by which these families' lives are ordered.

Jane Austen seems to have been born with the comic precision and other-worldly insight she everywhere displays in Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel (1811), which, though revised later, was completed in 1797 at the age of twenty-two. This meticulously constructed story of two sisters with opposing temperaments and romantic inclinations exemplifies the distilled spirit of classicism in English literature.

In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is the answer to those who believe that Jane Austen's novels, despite their perfection of form and tone, lack strong feeling. Its two heroines, Marianne and Elinor--so utterly unlike each other-both undergo the most violent passions when they are separated from the men they love. What differentiates them, and gives this extraordinary book its complexity and brilliance, is the way each expresses her suffering: Marianne-young, impetuous, ardent-falls into paroxysms of grief when she is rejected by the dashing John Willoughby; while her sister, Elinor--wiser, more sensible, more self-controlled--masks her despair when it appears that Edward Ferrars is to marry the mean-spirited and cunning Lucy Steele. All, of course, ends happily--but not until Elinor's "sense" and Marianne's "sensibility" have equally worked to reveal the profound emotional life that runs beneath the surface of Austen's immaculate and irresistible art.

An Everyman's Library edition of Jane Austen's revolutionary and inspiring novel, which is once again a major motion picture. Twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse is comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and the right to manage other people's lives--for their own good, of course. Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton--and ends with her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life's more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured. Austen's comic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she could use it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us a dazzling gallery of characters--some pretentious or ridiculous, some admirable and moving, all utterly true.

Elizabeth Bennet's chances of happiness are endangered by the foibles of human nature in this classic nineteenth-century novel

Probably the popular favourite among Jane Austen's novels, Pride and Prejudice was the first to be written (1796-7), when the author was just twenty-one. Revised for publication thirteen years later, it combines the freshness of youth with the skill of maturity, not least in the brilliance of the characterization and the attractiveness of the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.

Although described by Jane Austen as a character 'whom no one but myself will much like', the irrepressible Emma Woodhouse is one of her most beloved heroines. Clever, rich and beautiful, she sees no need for marriage, but loves interfering in the romantic lives of others, until her matchmaking plans unravel, with consequences that she never expected. Jane Austen's novel of youthful exuberance and gradual self-knowledge is a brilliant, sparkling comic masterpiece.

Northanger Abbey is the earliest of Jane Austen's great comedies of female enlightenment and combines literary burlesque - making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel - with larger moral, philosophical, and social issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, the inexcusability of not thinking for oneself, and the painful difficulties (especially for women) involved in growing up. Lady Susan and The Watsons are early compositions that reflect many of the qualities of Northanger Abbey. The first is an epistolary novel centring on the intrigues of the villainous Lady Susan; the second is an unfinished example of Jane Austen's most characteristic form - a story where the heroine is outstanding for her sense and goodness, virtues notably lacking in the other characters, who are here part of an altogether bleaker vision. Sanditon, too, is tragically incomplete, and it signals the achievement of a new depth and breadth of comic insight on the part of its author.

Jane Austen's last completed novel, a brilliantly insightful story of regret, second chances, and the courage to follow our hearts Anne Elliot is twenty-seven and unmarried--by all accounts a spinster in her time--seemingly doomed to spend the rest of her life waiting on her image-obsessed father and extravagant older sister; attempting to maintain their once lavish, now dwindling family estate; and occasionally babysitting the children of her married younger sister. It wasn't always this way, though. When Anne was nineteen, she was in love with and engaged to Frederick Wentworth, a man with no money and few prospects. Anne's well-meaning family and friends convinced her that a young heiress like herself could do better, so she broke off the engagement. But when chance brings Wentworth and Anne together again eight years later, he is now an accomplished naval captain with an impressive fortune, and Anne must face her feelings for him that remain and consider how different her life could have been if only she hadn't been so easily persuaded by others.

Emma, when first published in 1816, was written when Jane Austen was at the height of her powers. In it, we have her two greatest comic creations -- the eccentric Mr. Woodhouse and that quintissential bore, Miss Bates. In it, too, we have her most profound characterization: the witty, imaginative, self-deluded Emma, a heroine the author declared "no one but myself will much like," but who has been much loved by generations of readers. Delightfull funny, full of rich irony, Emma is regarded as one of Jane Austen's finest achievements.

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners--one of the most popular novels of all time--that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the "most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author's works," and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as "irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be."

One of the gifts from the 19th century to ours is the writing of Jane Austen. Her graceful and delicate perceptions are far different from those offered us today.In Mansfield Park she creates a household of young people, among them Fanny Price. During an era when upbringing was nearly everything, Fanny has the bad luck to be the poor relation in a wealthy family. Against a lovely and witty rival, she brings only natural goodness as a weapon in her battle for the man she loves.

In 1811, Jane Austen's first published work, Sense and Sensibility, marked the debut of England's premier novelist of manners. Believing that "3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on," she created a brilliant tragicomedy of flirtation and folly. Romantic walks through lush Devonshire and genteel dinner parties at a stately manor draw two pretty sisters into the schemes and manipulations of landed gentry determined to marry wisely and well. Neither sense nor sensibility can guarantee happiness for either--as romantic Marianne falls prey to a dangerous rascal, and reasonable Elinor loses her heart to a gentleman already engaged. Wonderfully entertaining yet subtle and probing in its characterizations, Sense and Sensibility richly displays the supreme artistry of a great English novelist.

This complete set of the novels of Jane Austen is now reissued as a shrink-wrapped set with handsome new jackets. Using the definitive text established by R.W. Chapman, with later revisions by distinguished scholars, the set presents the most authoritative and comprehensive edition available - invaluable for students and enthusiasts of Jane Austen's work. Each volume contains notes and appendices, and indexes of characters, and the set is illustrated with a charming selection of early nineteenth-century plates.