Titles in this set:
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Sense and Sensibility
3. Emma
4. Persuasion
5. Mansfield Park
6. Northanger Abbey
Description:
Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
The famous opening words of Pride and Prejudice carry the reader straight to the heart of the Bennet household, the home of no fewer than five marriageable daughters.
Austen's best-loved romance unfolds around the two eldest, Jane and Elizabeth, and two eligible bachelors, Mr Bingley and his friend Mr Darcy, When the lively Elizabeth first meets the aloof, conceited Darcy she dislikes him immediately, but this is only the prelude to a classic attraction of opposites.
Sense and Sensibility
The Dashwood sisters - 19-year-old Elinor and Marianne, aged 17 - are left poor and homeless by their father's death. Although kind relatives provide a roof over their heads, one way out of this misfortune is for both girls to marry well. However, impetuous Marianne and cautious Elinor find themselves having to choose between passionate romance and observing the rules of polite society Through risky liaisons, misunderstandings and illness, two very different individuals discover. in their own ways, that a mixture of sense and sensibility is the solution.
Emma
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich... had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
This comedy of manners, published in 1816, features Emma as an avowed spinster and matchmaker, who is convinced that she knows best who should marry whom. And despite Austen's own doubts, the charming and infuriating heroine is a favourite of many readers.
Having almost ruined the prospects of Harriet Smith, her protégée, and been reprimanded by her good friend, George Knightley, Emma finally learns a little humility. She also comes to some surprising conclusions about love and marriage.
Persuasion
I am half agony, half hope.
Anne Elliot lost the love of her life eight years earlier and the sorrow lingers on. Yet the dashing Captain Wentworth did not desert her; it was Anne who rejected him because she was persuaded that she could make a better match.
She never did.
Suddenly, life deals them a second chance. Anne and Wentworth meet again on the social circuit. He acts coolly and even openly courts a younger woman, yet Anne remains painfully alert for the slightest hint that their love might be rekindled.
Persuasion was Austen's last novel, published posthumously in 1818.
Mansfield Park
Everyone looks upon shy, self-effacing Fanny Price as the poor relation among her four spoiled cousins at Mansfield Park.
Adopted at a tender age by an uncle and aunt who have grown rich from a sugar plantation in distant Antigua, she finds herself morally at odds with them and their offspring Her chief consolation is the kindness of the younger son, Edmund Bertram, whom she secretly loves.
The arrival in the village of city sophisticates Henry and Mary Crawford sparks a series of romantic entanglements which lead the Bertrams to the brink of social disaster and Fanny to the indisputable conclusion that propriety and pretty manners are not substitutes for integrity.
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey is the light-hearted account of a young girls first excursion into fashionable society. Catherine Morland is taken to Bath where, among a crowd of new acquaintances, she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to stay at their family home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine, a devotee of horrid Gothic novels, fervently hopes that the Abbey will match the haunted ruins conjured up in her imagination.
While poking fun at popular fiction, Catherine's story also exposes the difference between illusion and reality, and shows how her artless approach to people attracts true friendship and love.