Emma

'Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich', has lived twenty-one years in the village of Highbury 'with very little to distress or vex her'. Proud of having arranged her governess's marriage, she takes up a pretty, simple girl of unknown parents, Harriet Smith, persuades her to refuse a good young farmer, and tries to match her with the vicar, Mr Elton, who turns out to want Emma herself. Her schemes go wrong one after another, around the mysterious Frank Churchill, the reserved Jane Fairfax and the talkative Miss Bates, while her old friend Mr Knightley watches and scolds.

Jane Austen published the novel at the end of 1815 and, at the Prince Regent's request, dedicated it to him; she said she had created a heroine 'whom no one but myself will much like'. Its subtle irony lets the reader share Emma's mistakes, and its picnic on Box Hill is one of the great scenes of English fiction. It is the comic opposite of Mansfield Park.

Jane Austen (1775–1817) grew up in a crowded rectory in the Hampshire village of Steventon, the seventh of eight children, writing comic sketches to amuse her family. She never married, lived quietly in Bath and then in a cottage at Chawton, and published her novels anonymously, signed only 'By a Lady'. She died in Winchester at forty-one.

Her six novels, from Pride and Prejudice to Emma and Persuasion, turn the small world of country families, marriages and money into sharp, funny studies of character. Her ironic narration, slipping in and out of her heroines' thoughts, changed the way novels are written.