Emma (Vintage Classics Austen Series): Jane Austen - Softcover

Austen, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099589273 ISBN 13: 9780099589273

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2014

Synopsis

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW MOTION

The Vintage Classics Austen series is designed by the writer and illustrator Leanne Shapton and introduced by some of our finest contemporary writers and Austen fans: Alexander McCall Smith, Lynne Truss, Amanda Vickery, Francesca Segal, P.D. James and Andrew Motion.

'Jane Austen's Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility' Robert McCrum, Observer

Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new friend Harriet, however, lead her into complications that ultimately test her own detachment from the world of romance.

About this title

Review:

"I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of return; it would do her good," remarks one of Jane Austen's characters in Emma.

Quick-witted, beautiful, headstrong and rich, Emma Woodhouse is inordinately fond of match-making select inhabitants of the village of Highbury, yet aloof and oblivious as to the question of whom she herself might marry. This paradox multiplies the intrigues and sparkling ironies of Jane Austen's masterpiece, her comedy of a sentimental education through which Emma discovers a capacity for love and marriage.

Review:

"Whatever age you are, Austen has something for you. I would go further, in fact, to assert that a reader never comes away from an Austen novel empty-handed" (Joanna Trollope)

"That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with" (Sir Walter Scott)

"I'd like to write a play as perfect as Emma" (Simon Gray)

"Austen's characters are unquestionably one key to her greatness. Her understanding of the human heart is forensic and also frosted with the necessary detachment that gives deeper meaning to her rendering of human frailty" (Guardian)

"It is the cleverest of books. I especially love the dialogue - every speech reveals the characters' obsessions and preoccupations, yet it remains perfectly natural...absolutely gripping" (Susannah Clarke)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0099589273
• ISBN 13: 9780099589273
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592