Emma

Oft-copied but never bettered, Jane Austen's Emma is a remarkable comedy of manners. Now a major motion picture starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Miranda Hart and Bill Nighy.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. Gorgeously illustrated by the celebrated Hugh Thomson, this Macmillan Collector's Library edition also includes an afterword by David Pinching.Set in the fictional village of Highbury, Austen follows the charming but insensitive Emma Woodhouse as she sets out on an ill-fated career in match-making. Adopting the pretty but dreary Harriet Smith as her subject, Emma creates misunderstandings and chaos as she attempts to find Harriet a suitor – until she begins to realize it isn't the lives of others she must try to transform, but her own.

It's provincial, opaque, sparkling and wonderfully optimistic while being at the same time tinged with intimations of sorrow and mortality., Emma’s brilliance—its enduring status as a masterpiece of fiction—is that it puts us in the position of the less-clever-than-she-thinks-she-is heroine, Emma seems to know more about our hearts that we ever do, no matter how old or experienced we may think we are.

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in rural Hampshire, the daughter of an affluent village rector who encouraged her in her artistic pursuits. In novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma she developed her subtle analysis of contemporary life through depictions of the middle-classes in small towns. Her sharp wit and incisive portraits of ordinary people have given her novels enduring popularity. Austen died in 1817, aged forty-one.