Emma
Emma, by Jane Austen, first published in December 1815, is a comic novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The author explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among her characters.
Emma is determined that she’s never going to get married….
EmmaShe’s beautiful, rich and clever, and has decided she’s perfectly happy with single life. What Emma does love, however, is interfering in other people’s business (and she is always convinced she’s right). When she ignores the advice of her friend Mr. Knightley and insists on matchmaking for her friend for her friend Harrier, her carefully laid plans go disastrously wrong.
Is Emma so wrapped up in other people’s love lives that she fails to spot happiness when it’s right under her nose? Perhaps, when it comes to affairs of the heart, she can’t control everything after all…
Though the domain of Jane Austen’s novels was as circumscribed as her life, her caustic wit and keen
A sketch of Jane Austen,drawn by her sisterobservation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family’s entertainment. As a clergyman’s daughter from a well-connected family, she had an ample opportunity to study the habits of the middle class, the gentry, and the aristocracy. At twenty-one, she began a novel called “The First Impressions” an early version of 傲慢与偏见 Pride and Prejudice. In 1801, on her father’s retirement, the family moved to the fashionable resort of Bath. Two years later she sold the first version of Northanger Abby to a London publisher, but the first of her novels to appear was Sense and Sensibility, published at her own expense in 1811. It was followed by Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815).
After her father died in 1805, the family first moved to Southampton then to Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Despite this relative retirement, Jane Austen was still in touch with a wider world, mainly through her brothers; one had become a very rich country gentleman, another a London banker, and two were naval officers. Though her many novels were published anonymously, she had many early and devoted readers, among them the Prince Regent and Sir Walter Scott. In 1816, in declining health, Austen wrote Persuasion and revised Northanger Abby, Her last work, Sandition, was left unfinished at her death on July 18, 1817. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Austen’s identity as an author was announced to the world posthumously by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abby and Persuasion in 1818.