The novel follows Anne Elliot, the sensible, intelligent, and overlooked twenty-nine-year-old daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a vain and haughty baronet who cares above all else about social status and physical appearance. Eight years earlier, Anne fell deeply in love with Captain Frederick Wentworth, a handsome, ambitious young naval officer with no fortune or family connections. Persuaded b…
The story is set in the fictional, wealthy village of Highbury and follows Emma Woodhouse: twenty-one, handsome, clever, rich, and remarkably self-satisfied. Having successfully engineered the marriage of her former governess, Miss Taylor, to the local widower Mr. Weston, Emma fancies herself a brilliant matchmaker. Despite gentle warnings from her sensible neighbor and lifelong friend, Mr. …
Often considered Jane Austen’s most mature, morally complex, and socially acute novel, Mansfield Park departs from the sparkling romantic comedy of Pride and Prejudice. Instead, it offers a quiet, deeply observant examination of morality, steadfast integrity, social class, and the quiet corruptions of the English country house.
Lady Susan and Other Works is a compelling collection that brings together Jane Austen’s earliest experiments in fiction (her "juvenilia"), her completed early short epistolary novel, and the fragments of novels she left unfinished. While her famous "big six" novels (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, etc.) cemented her legacy, this collection offers a fascinating look at the sharper, wilder, and mor…
Sense and Sensibility is the debut novel of English author Jane Austen, published anonymously in 1811 (credited simply as "By a Lady"). A sharp, witty social comedy and a profound psychological study, the novel contrasts the temperaments and romantic trials of two aristocratic sisters living in Regency-era England.
The story follows Catherine Morland, a young, imaginative, and delightfully naive seventeen-year-old from a large, unpretentious family. Unlike the typical tragic heroines of gothic romances, Catherine is neither tragically poor nor uncommonly gifted; she simply loves reading gothic novels like Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Invited by wealthy family friends, the Allens, to visit …