Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition
had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
The celebrated opening of Jane Austens Emma introduces readers to a supremely self-assured and accomplished young woman who believes herself immune to romance. By turns brilliant and foolish, self-aware and self-deluding, Emma leaps from error to error, writes Margaret Drabble in her incisive Introduction, wreaking comic havoc in the lives of those around her. The mature flowering of Austens singular and prolific genius, Emma is the compelling story of a woman seeking her true nature and finding true love in the process.