Emma Woodhouse is the lovely, lively, willful, and fallible heroine of Jane Austen's fourth published novel.

Confident that she knows best, Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, only to discover that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart.

As Emma puzzles and blunders her way through the mysteries of her social world, Austen evokes for her readers a cast of unforgettable characters and a detailed portrait of a small town undergoing historical transition.

Written with matchless wit and irony, judged by many to be her finest novel, Emma has been adapted many times for film and television.

This new edition contains lively notes and an introduction that shows how Austen brilliantly turns the mundane into the exceptional.Jane Austen was an English novelist and whose social commentary and masterful use of both free indirect speech and irony eventually made her one of the most influential and honoured novelists in English literature.

Her novels were all written and set around the Regency Era.Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters and six brothers of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra.

Two of her brothers, James and Henry, followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy, while two other brothers Francis and Charles both pursuedn naval careers.

A fifth brother, George, had a disability, and did not live with the family.

Austen's sister, like her mother, was named Cassandra.

Austen never married and died at age 41.