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As is often the case with Ms. Austen's fiction, "Persuasion" deals with the social issues of the times and paints a fascinating portrait of Regency England, especially when dealing with the class syst

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melvil

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 son of Jane Austen's 'favourite niece' Fanny Knight, Lord Brabourne, had inherited a large number of letters from Austen including some to her sister Cassandra and others to members of the Knight family. The Letters of Jane Austen (1884) publishes these letters for the first time, and sets them in a family context drawn from the reminiscences of those who knew Austen personally. This first of two volumes begins with a biographical essay and then includes letters from 1796, when Austen was a young woman of twenty preoccupied with social events and the courtship of her friends, to 1807, which found her in lodging with her mother and sister in Southampton, much sobered by the recent death of her father. Her topics are often domestic ('You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me') and her wit is evident throughout.

The son of Jane Austen's 'favourite niece' Fanny Knight, Lord Brabourne, had inherited a large number of letters from Jane Austen including some to her sister Cassandra and others to members of the Knight family. The Letters of Jane Austen (1884) publishes these letters for the first time, and sets them in a family context drawn from the reminiscences of those who knew Austen personally. This second of two volumes presents a series of letters written between 1808 and her death in 1817, that is, mostly in the years she was settled at Chawton in Hampshire; in addition Brabourne includes a little group of poems, and other family documents. The letters cover the years of her career as a published author, and include many fascinating comments about her own and others' writings, as well as observations about the world around her.

This is the first fully annotated scholarly edition of Jane Austen's complete works. Each volume features an extensive introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, full expla

The manuscripts that survive from Jane Austen's maturity offer a unique insight into her life as a creative writer. This volume collects together all the literary manuscripts from Austen's adult years (with the exception of the cancelled chapters of Persuasion, in this edition printed with the finished novel), together with letters discussing the art of fiction, and her record of responses to her novels. Included here are the novella Lady Susan, the novel fragments of The Watsons and Sanditon, poems and charades, and the comic 'Plan of a Novel'. In an appendix are collected other works ascribed to Austen, including the play Sir Charles Grandison and three prayers. The introduction offers a history of the manuscripts and a full account of the current state of scholarship on them, and the texts are accompanied by explanatory notes and contextual information.

'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

Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her soc

Emma is young, rich, and independent. She has decided to never marry and instead spends her time organizing her acquaintances’ love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new friend Har

Elinor is as prudent as her sister Marianne is impetuous. Both sisters must learn from the other after they are forced to leave their home and enter into the contests of polite society after the unt

Elizabeth Bennett is young, clever, and attractive, but she and her four sisters are in dire need of financial security in the shape of husbands. The arrival of the pleasant nice Mr. Bingley and the o

Famously characterized as the story of two Dashwood sisters who embody the conflict between the oppressive nature of "civilized" society and the human desire for romantic passion, there is far more t

A sparkling love story set at a seaside resort-now in a new package When the man whose proposal she rejected returns from his long military tour at sea, Anne Elliot is forced to face the decision she

Spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of a family of five daughters; with no male heir, the Bennetestate must someday pass to their priggish cousin William Collins. Therefore the girls must marry well—and

Mansfield Park encompasses not only Jane Austen’s great comedic gifts and her genius as a historian of the human animal, but her personal credo as well—her faith in a social order that combats chaos t

The most perfect of Jane Austen’s perfect novels begins with twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the unde

Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance.Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman

No novel in English has given more pleasure than Pride and Prejudice. Because it is one of the great works in our literature, critics in every generation reexamine and reinterpret it. But the rest of

In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is the answer to those critics and readers who believe that Jane Austen’s novels, despite their perfection of

Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century. But most of all,

Emma is considered by many readers to be Jane Austen's crowning achievement, a timeless comedy of manners that lays bare the limits on women's autonomy in Regency England. The disparity between Emma

The beloved author left behind two tantalizing unfinished novels: The Watsons, which revisits Austen's customary milieu of courtship; and her last work, Sanditon, a venture into new territory, amid gu

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most cherished love stories in English literature, delighting generations of readers with its high comedy, social observation, and compelling romance, and spawning a

Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Here in one volume are her seven great novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride a

One of the first of Jane Austen's novels to be written, and one of the last to be published, Northanger Abbey is both an amusing story of how a naive girl enters society and wins the affection of a witty young clergyman, and a high-spirited parody of the lurid Gothic novels that were popular during Austen's youth. In the process it features a vivid account of social life in late eighteenth-century Bath, and Austen's famous defence of the novel as a literary form. This edition, based on the text of the novel as published posthumously in 1818, is accompanied by explanatory notes and an appendix summarising the plots and situations of the Gothic fictions that form the basis of much of Austen's comedy. In addition there is an extensive critical introduction covering the context, publication and critical history of the novel, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus.

Jane Austen's remarkable juvenilia date from 1787, when she was eleven, to 1793, when she was seventeen. She preserved these early writings in three manuscript notebooks, entitled, with mock solemnity, 'Volume the First', 'Volume the Second', and 'Volume the Third'. Most of these works are short fictions, but Austen also wrote the opening of what could have become a full-length novel, 'Catharine', as well as dramatic sketches, verses, and a few non-fictional pieces. Astonishingly sophisticated and inventive, these writings are now receiving the scholarly attention they deserve. This edition provides a fresh transcription of Austen's manuscripts, with comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction, covering the context and publication history of the juvenilia, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus. It also prints, for the first time, the copious satirical marginalia that Austen wrote on her copies of Oliver Goldsmith's History of Engla

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel (1811), introduced its readers to many of the themes which would dominate Austen's future work. On one level it is a simple story of two sisters finding fulfilment within a society bounded by regulations and restrictions. But on another it is a comprehensive exploration of the moral dilemmas facing young women in the choices they have to make about their lives. Austen writes about everyday events of her own time with a subtlety and sensitivity unprecedented in the English novel. This edition, first published in 2006, takes as its copytext the second edition of 1813, which corrects some errors of the first edition. The volume provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus. This edition is an indispensable resource for all scholars and readers of Austen.

The accident of death makes Persuasion Jane Austen's final novel. It deserves its position by its innovative treatment of passion and rhetorical style and its development of those themes of memory and time, public and private history, inner and outer lives, language and literature, emotion and restraint that have marked all Austen's work. Where the other works move towards a new symbolic and physical home for the heroine, Persuasion begins with her ejection and ends with her understanding that home is not a place at all but an ambiance and an acceptance of change. This volume, first published in 2006, provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus. This edition is an indispensable resource for all scholars and readers of Austen.

Inspired by Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and written in a similar epistolary form, Lady Susan is one of Jane Austen’s earliest finished works. In it, she reveals all the caustic wit and brilliant social

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' With this famous declaration Jane Austen launches into the story of the five Bennet sisters. It is a story that on first reading is full of suspense, surprise and, ultimately, satisfaction, and which on re-reading commands, in addition, admiration for the author's supreme skill in managing a deceptively complex plot to its triumphant conclusion. First published in 1813, and Austen's most popular novel in her own lifetime, Pride and Prejudice has since been widely recognised as one of the finest novels in the English language. This volume, first published in 2006, provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus. This edition is an indispensable resource for all scholars and readers of Austen.

She's beautiful, rich and clever, and has decided she's perfectly happy with the single life. What Emma does love, however, is interfering in other people's business (and she is always convinced she's

Eight years ago, Anne rejected the man she loved because her friends and family persuaded her that he wasn't rich or important enough. In all that time, she's never found anyone to match Captain Wentw

Eight years earlier, Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth fell in love, but Anne allowed herself to be persuaded that the young man wasn’t an adequate match. Anne soon realized this to be a terrible mi

Marianne Dashwood is young, flirtatious, and ready to meet a knight in shining armor. Her sister, Elinor, is more restrained?she knows that when it comes to romance, slow and steady wins the race. But

Jane Austen’s first novel tells the story of Catherine Morland, the very ideal of a nice girl. But her naïve heroine is also in possession of an overactive imagination, fueled by her obsession with go

“I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.” Perhaps Jane Austen’s best-loved book, Pride and Prejudice recounts th

When the gorgeous Henry Crawford and his pretty sister, Mary, come to Mansfield, they have no idea of the commotion they will cause. There they find the Bertram family, with their beautiful daughters

Now in Penguin Classics-a treasure trove of Jane Austen's novelsView our Austen-mania feature page here. Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the w

Emma is Austen's most technically accomplished novel, with a hidden plot, the full implications of which are only revealed by a second reading. It is here presented for the first time with a full scholarly apparatus. The text retains the spelling and the punctuation of the first edition of 1816, allowing readers to see the novel as Austen's contemporaries first encountered it. This volume, first published in 2005, provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus.