Product Description

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. So begins Jane Austen's comic masterpiece Emma. In Emma, Austen's prose brilliantly elevates, in the words of Virginia Woolf, the trivialities of day-to-day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances of early-nineteenth-century life in the English countryside to an unrivaled level of pleasure for the reader. At the center of this world is the inimitable Emma Woodhouse, a self-proclaimed matchmaker who, by the novel's conclusion, just may find herself the victim of her own best intentions.

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes newly commissioned notes on the text.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99535 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-08
• Released on: 2001-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375757426
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
"Jane Austen is my favorite author! ... Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers." ?EM Forster -- Review

Review
"Jane Austen is my favorite author! ... Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers." —EM Forster

From the Inside Flap
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. So begins Jane Austen's comic masterpiece Emma. In Emma, Austen's prose brilliantly elevates, in the words of Virginia Woolf, the trivialities of day-to-day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances of early-nineteenth-century life in the English countryside to an unrivaled level of pleasure for the reader. At the center of this world is the inimitable Emma Woodhouse, a self-proclaimed matchmaker who, by the novel's conclusion, just may find herself the victim of her own best intentions.

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes newly commissioned notes on the text.

Customer Reviews

Austen's Emma is unusually attractive!
Jane Austen wrote some of the most remarkable romantic novels in English, and Emma is said to be written at the height of her powers. Like all her novels (Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility), the narrative is simple, straightforward and the story develops through seemingly commonplace conversations and events. Emma is twenty one year old daughter to rich Mr Woodhouse, "full of trivial communications and harmless gossip." The story captures how Emma comes to terms with her own errors of judgement, and how she discovers her liking and love for one of the chief characters of the novel. (Perhaps giving his name away here would be sacrilage on my part!!). The cast, the locations, the conversations are set in distinct Austen style, rooted in rural English counties. The romances are Victorian, and progress through delicate, slow developments that a through, diehard romantic is bound to like. Emma's actions are governed by her own romantic fantasies, where she tries to bring people together playing a matchmaker, and her failures as well as successes make this novel an interesting read. A treat for Austen fans!

"I seem to have been doomed to blindness."
Emma Woodhouse, "handsome, clever, and rich," is the 21-year-old daughter of the elderly owner of Hartfield, the largest estate in Highbury. Though only a couple of hours away from London by carriage, Highbury regards itself as an isolated and virtually self-contained community, with the Woodhouse family the center of social life and at the top of its social ladder.

Emma, doting on her hypochondriac father, whom she represents to the outside world, has grown up without a mother's softening influence, and at twenty-one, she is bright, willful, and not a little spoiled. Having too little to do to keep out of trouble, Emma's hobby is matchmaking, "the greatest amusement in the world." Unfortunately, her sophistication in the social graces does not extend to much insight into human beings.

Taking Harriet Smith, a young woman of "questionable birth" under her wing, Emma makes Harriet her "project," educating her in the social graces, convincing Harriet not to marry farmer Robert Martin, who has courted her, and ultimately persuading Harriet, wrongly, that the vicar, Mr. Elton, is falling in love with her.

Bored and without a large circle of "suitable" friends, Emma is an incorrigible meddler, playing with the lives of those around her, snubbing those she considers inferior, gossiping about others in an attempt to divert attention to herself, and misreading intentions. Only Mr. Knightly, sixteen years older than Emma and a friend of her father, stands up to Emma and tells her what he thinks of her behavior, and it is through him that she eventually begins to grow.

Love and the formal protocol or marriage are a major focus here, with marriage more often a merger of "appropriate" families than the result of romance or passion. Class distinctions, acknowledged by all levels of society, limit both personal friendships and romantic possibilities, and as Emma's matchmaking fails again and again, causing grief to many of her victims, Emma begins to recognize that her pride, willfulness, and love of power over others have made her oblivious to her own faults.

Austen shines in her depiction of Emma and her upperclass friends, gently satirizing their weaknesses but leaving room for them to learn from their mistakes-if only they can learn to recognize the ironies in their lives. Though Emma may be, in some ways, Austen's least charming heroine, she is certainly vibrant and, with her annoying faults, a most realistic one. Mary Whipple

Emma transcends time
Once you master the difficulty of the language(some in our reading group never did), you can focus on the story and relate to the witty and impudent Emma. In one incident Emma and her best friend and former governess share a non-verbal communication by stepping on the other's foot under the table when something wild is happening! So many of these "modern" exchanges take place, that I was able to drop my misinformed presumptions that the english gentry class of the nineteenth century are so different from me. There are moments of great cruelty (such is the case of class struggle) and there are two hilarious characters; the gossipy neighbor who barely catches her breath, and answers her own questions, and Emma's worrisome and overprotective father. The story seems to be one party after another -- from parlor rooms to ballrooms to picnic luncheons -- you will be amazed at how much time these people have on their hands! Oh, the leisure class. Emma goes through some humbling changes, and there are surprising turns of events. I found myself wishing for Emma's world -- where your neighbors are intimates and you alternately visit and are visited upon, and work isn't in the picture.