Emma (Signet Classics) - Softcover

Jane Austen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451530829 ISBN 13: 9780451530820

Publisher: Signet Classics, 2001

Synopsis

A fascinating, hilarious, and timeless coming-of-age tale featuring one of Jane Austen's most memorable characters.

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition…had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”
 
The celebrated opening of Jane Austen’s Emma introduces readers to a supremely self-assured and accomplished young woman who believes herself immune to romance. By turns brilliant and foolish, self-aware and self-deluding, Emma “leaps from error to error,” writes Margaret Drabble in her incisive Introduction, wreaking comic havoc in the lives of those around her. The mature flowering of Austen’s singular and prolific genius, Emma is the compelling story of a woman seeking her true nature and finding true love in the process.

With an Introduction by Margaret Drabble
and an Afterword by Sabrina Jeffries 

About this title

About the Author

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 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 July 18, 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. Margaret Drabble is recipient of many prestigious awards for her writing, which includes works of nonfiction as well as numerous novels.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451530829
• ISBN 13: 9780451530820
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 428