Book

Emma / Jane Austen ; edited with an introduction by Ronald Blythe.

ISBN: 9780140430103
ISBN: 0140430105
Physical Description: 471 pages ; 18 cm.
Publisher: London, United Kingdom : Penguin, 1985.
Copyright: &copy;1966.

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 (author.). Blythe, Ronald, 1922-2023 (author of the introduction.).

Summary:

"'The happiest of love stories, the most fiendishly difficult of detective stories and a matchless repository of English wit.' Thus comments Ronald Blythe, adding that Emma was the climax of Jane Austen's genius and the Parthenon of fiction. Jane Austen would have, no doubt, demurred in her cool, ironic way at this verdict; she herself wrote that she was planning to take a heroine in Emma 'which no one but myself would like'. Vital, interesting, complex and predisposed to play a power game with other people's emotions, Emma is none the less one of Jane Austen's immortal creations. Dominating the novel as she dominates the small provincial world of Highbury, her forays into the matchmaking arena bring her up sharply against the follies of her egotism and selfishness. The consequent crisis, her bitter regrets and the happy resolution are plotted with Jane Austen's incomparable art in this sharp and gloriously sparkling comedy of self-deceit and self-discovery."-- back cover.