Blind to the pitfalls of romance, Emma plays matchmaker for her friend Harriet. Yet she is unprepared to discover that fate has other plans for Harriet... as well as for Emma herself. A Jane Austen favorite, Emma is an intriguiging tale of the perils that come with interfering with matters of the heart.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of the most significant novelists of nineteenth-century English literature. A member of the landed gentry, she lived primarily in quiet seclusion among a tight-knit circle of family and friends until her untimely death from Addison’s disease at the age of 41.
Although sales of her works were steady, she did not meet with great commercial or critical success in her lifetime. Academic interest surged in the twentieth century, and her works today enjoy continued popularity in robust book sales and in motion picture and television adaptations.
Notable works include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818) were published posthumously.
Ellen K. Gregory earned her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Arizona and her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. She has taught English classes on an adjunct basis at Brigham Young University and Utah State University.
A recipient of a QuickFunds grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she has had work accepted by Segullah, The Wasatch Journal, Literary Mama, BYU Studies, The Ensign, and other publications.
She currently resides with her husband and five children in southeastern Idaho.
Additional titles by this publisher may be found at www.finisterrabooks.com.Of all Jane Austen's heroines, Emma Woodhouse is the most flawed, the most infuriating, and, in the end, the most endearing. Pride and Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet has more wit and sparkle; Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey more imagination; and Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood certainly more sense--but Emma is lovable precisely because she is so imperfect. Austen only completed six novels in her lifetime, of which five feature young women whose chances for making a good marriage depend greatly on financial issues, and whose prospects if they fail are rather grim. Emma is the exception: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." One may be tempted to wonder what Austen could possibly find to say about so fortunate a character. The answer is, quite a lot.
For Emma, raised to think well of herself, has such a high opinion of her own worth that it blinds her to the opinions of others. The story revolves around a comedy of errors: Emma befriends Harriet Smith, a young woman of unknown parentage, and attempts to remake her in her own image. Ignoring the gaping difference in their respective fortunes and stations in life, Emma convinces herself and her friend that Harriet should look as high as Emma herself might for a husband--and she zeroes in on an ambitious vicar as the perfect match. At the same time, she reads too much into a flirtation with Frank Churchill, the newly arrived son of family friends, and thoughtlessly starts a rumor about poor but beautiful Jane Fairfax, the beloved niece of two genteelly impoverished elderly ladies in the village. As Emma's fantastically misguided schemes threaten to surge out of control, the voice of reason is provided by Mr. Knightly, the Woodhouse's longtime friend and neighbor. Though Austen herself described Emma as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," she endowed her creation with enough charm to see her through her most egregious behavior, and the saving grace of being able to learn from her mistakes. By the end of the novel Harriet, Frank, and Jane are all properly accounted for, Emma is wiser (though certainly not sadder), and the reader has had the satisfaction of enjoying Jane Austen at the height of her powers. --Alix WilberBlind to the pitfalls of romance, Emma plays matchmaker for her friend Harriet. Yet she is unprepared to discover that fate has other plans for Harriet... as well as for Emma herself. A Jane Austen favorite, Emma is an intriguiging tale of the perils that come with interfering with matters of the heart.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of the most significant novelists of nineteenth-century English literature. A member of the landed gentry, she lived primarily in quiet seclusion among a tight-knit circle of family and friends until her untimely death from Addison’s disease at the age of 41.
Although sales of her works were steady, she did not meet with great commercial or critical success in her lifetime. Academic interest surged in the twentieth century, and her works today enjoy continued popularity in robust book sales and in motion picture and television adaptations.
Notable works include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818) were published posthumously.
Ellen K. Gregory earned her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Arizona and her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. She has taught English classes on an adjunct basis at Brigham Young University and Utah State University.
A recipient of a QuickFunds grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she has had work accepted by Segullah, The Wasatch Journal, Literary Mama, BYU Studies, The Ensign, and other publications.
She currently resides with her husband and five children in southeastern Idaho.
Additional titles by this publisher may be found at www.finisterrabooks.com. .
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