Description: Generally considered Austen's finest work, Emma is the story of a charmingly self-deluded heroine whose injudicious matchmaking schemes often lead to substantial mortification.
Brief description: Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Steventon Rectory, a village in north-east Hampshire, England, on December 16, 1775. The Austen family later moved to Bath and then to Chawton in Hampshire. The seventh of eight children in a rector's family, Jane started writing a young age. She is now one of the most widely read and respected of all English language novelists, but was never publicly acknowledged as a writer during her lifetime. Her six major novels, now considered literary classics, are Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion.