Austen Jane

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', but Emma is irresistible. 'Handsome, clever, and rich', Emma is also an 'imaginist', 'on fire with speculation and foresight'. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married. Her matchmaking maps out relationships that Jane Austen ironically tweaks into a clearer perspective. Judgement and imagination are matched in games the reader too can enjoy, and the end is a triumph of understanding.

Three of the author's most popular works — widely admired for their satiric wit, subtlety, and perfection of style — brilliantly re-create the provincial world of the early-19th-century English countryside, focusing, respectively, on husband-hunting mothers and daughters, the humbling of proud lovers, and the return of a once-rejected lover.

Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest of five daughters whom Mrs. Bennet is anxious to dispose of in marriage, is the most intelligent and delightful of all Jane Austen's heroines. Her vitality, vivacity and wit, her hasty dismissal of superior Mr. Darcy — the most disagreeable man in the world — how he improves his manners and she changes her mind, are the central ingredients of Pride and Prejudice. It is Jane Austen's best-loved novel and through the depth and sparkle of its comedy we are encouraged to consider what balance of energy and order, playfulness and regulation constitutes real strength of character.

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. What does persuasion mean — a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love Captain Wentworth did in the wars. Even though she is nearly thirty, well past the sell-by bloom of youth, Austen makes her win out for herself and for others like herself, in a regenerated society.

This complete and unabridged edition contains a biography of the author and a new introduction and afterword. Anne falls in love with Wentworth, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining influence, so persuaded by friends and family she breaks off the match and sends him away. Years later, he returns, is it too late?

Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. 'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival.

Probably the popular favourite among Jane Austen's novels, Pride and Prejudice was the first to be written (1796-7), when the author was just twenty-one. Revised for publication thirteen years later, it combines the freshness of youth with the skill of maturity, not least in the brilliance of the characterization and the attractiveness of the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.

Emma Wodehouse has led a simple life, but during the course of this, she at last reaps her share of the world's vexations. In this comedy of manners, the heroine learns to come to terms with the reality of other people, and with her own erring nature.

This is the story of two sisters: one with good sense and the other with romantic sensibility. Together with their mother they must make a life for themselves after the death of their father. They are obliged to leave their home and have very little money to live on. Marriage offers the best prospect of security, but the Dashwood sisters have very different ideas on love and marriage.

Portraying social life in fashionable Bath and centred around Catherine Morland, this novel ridicules the popular tales of romance and terror and contrasts with these the normal realities of life.