Emma n/e (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Austen, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199535523 ISBN 13: 9780199535521

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

'I wonder what will become of her!'

So speculate the friends and neighbours of Emma Woodhouse, the lovely, lively, wilful,and fallible heroine of Jane Austen's fourth published novel. Confident that she knows best, Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, only to discover that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart. As Emma puzzles and blunders her way through the mysteries of her social world, Austen evokes for her readers a cast of unforgettable characters and a detailed portrait of a small town undergoing historical transition.

Written with matchless wit and irony, judged by many to be her finest novel, Emma has been adapted many times for film and television. This new edition shows how Austen brilliantly turns the everyday into the exceptional.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199535523
• ISBN 13: 9780199535521
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Kinsley James