Emma stands a little apart from Jane Austen's other novels.

It is perhaps the most self-aware, socially critical and ironic of all her works.

Her protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, is a beautiful, rich girl who is also spoiled, proud and blinded by her own situation in life.

She begins to understand herself and life a little better when her romantic schemes - charitable good works to those around her - become entangled in tensions of class and of the heart.

Austen wrote of Emma, "e;I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like."e;