In SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen writes about two ways of looking at the world in the personalities of two sisters, Elinor the determinedly practical and Marianne the madly romantic. Forced to live in reduced circumstances with their widowed mother and younger sister, the Dashwood girls must rely on marrying well if they are to survive in the ...more
As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--to arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self...more
NORTHANGER ABBEY is about a naïve young woman whose head is full of the Gothic novels she consumes, and who begins to imagine that life may well be even stranger than fiction. Catherine Morland makes a touching, if somewhat charmingly brainless, heroine; Henry Tilney is a self-possessed and witty hero; and the plot device in which Catherine sees G...more
These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel "Lady Susan" depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, "The Watsons" is a delightful fragment, whos...more
Few great writers can have cut so unglamorous a figure in the world as Jane Austen did. The fifth child of a Hampshire clergyman of modest means, Austen was more highly regarded among her family for her skill with the embroidery needle than for the sharpness of her wit. Yet, nearly two hundred years after she first put pen to paper, Austen's i...more
Shortly before she died, Jane Austen started working on a new novel. Never finished, it was bequeathed to her favorite niece and remained unknown until 1871, when her nephew referred to it in his Memoir of Jane Austen. While her nephew did not consider it worthy of publishing, novelist and critic E.M. Forester firmly disagreed stating that the work...more
Austen's last novel is the crowning achievment of her matchless career. Her heroine, Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity, breeding and great depth of emotion, stands in stark contrast to the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England. Includes an Introduction by Margaret Drabble, famed novelist and editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Langua...more
Buy from Amazon
