
This sourcebook introduces not only Jane Austen's text, but also the literary and historical contexts and the many different critical readings that it has generated, from the time of its publication to the twenty-first century.

Emma is widely regarded as Jane Austen's most perfectly constructed novel. At once a comedy of misunderstanding, a razor-sharp analysis of the English class-system, a classic tale of moral growth, and a romance that combines sense with sensibility, it has appealed to readers...