Emma

Emma is a novel by the English author Jane Austen, first published in December 1815, though the title page is dated 1816. It is set in the fictional Surrey village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and it concerns the relationships among a small number of families.

The novel is a comedy of manners, and as in Austen's other books it examines the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian and Regency England. Before she began writing it, Austen said she was going to take a heroine whom nobody but herself would much like, and the first sentence introduces the character as handsome, clever and rich, which sets up the gap between her advantages and her judgement.

The plot is driven by Emma's errors rather than by external events. Her attempts to arrange other people's marriages produce consequences she has not foreseen, and the book's interest is in the slow correction of her self-image. The village and the surrounding estates are the whole of the world the novel covers, so Emma's mistakes are social rather than dramatic and the correction has to come from inside that circle.