Jane AustenThe Complete Works (7 Books)

About

Few novelists have conveyed the subtleties and nuances of their own social milieu with the wit and insight of Jane Austen. Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their circle, she paints vivid portraits of English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close. Each of the novels is a love story and a story about marriage for love, financial security and social status. But they are not mere romances; ironic, comic and wise, they are masterly studies of the society Jane Austen observed.

Titles Include:

Sense and Sensibility

Elinor, the eldest sister, embodies the qualities of sense, rationality, and restraint, while Marianne is characterized by her sensibility, passion, and emotional intensity. As they grapple with the challenges of love and heartbreak, the sisters must confront their own desires and limitations, while also contending with the expectations of their family and society.

Through its richly drawn characters and incisive wit, "Sense and Sensibility" offers a nuanced exploration of the constraints of social convention and the complexities of human nature. Austen's sharp observation and keen insight into the foibles of her characters elevate this novel beyond mere romance, making it a timeless classic that continues to resonate with readers today.

Emma

Jane Austen teased readers with the idea of a 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', but Emma is irresistible. 'Handsome, clever, and rich', Emma is also an 'imaginist', 'on fire with speculation and foresight'. She sees the signs of romance all around her, but thinks she will never be married. Her matchmaking maps out relationships that Jane Austen ironically tweaks into a clearer perspective. Judgement and imagination are matched in games the reader too can enjoy, and the end is a triumph of understanding.

Persuasion

Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen, she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up.

Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighbourhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne’s never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in Persuasion, a masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English language.

Mansfield Park

In Mansfield Park, first published in 1814, when the author had reached her full maturity as a novelist, Jane Austen paints some of her most witty and perceptive studies of character. Against a genteel country landscape of formal parks and stately homes, the gossipy Mrs. Norris becomes a masterful comic creation; the fickle young suitor Henry Crawford provides an unequalled portrait of an unscrupulous young man; and the complexly drawn Fanny Price emerges as one of Jane Austen's finest achievements--the poor cousin who comes to stay with her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park and learns how the game of love can too easily turn to folly. More intricately plotted and wider in scope than Austen's earlier works, Mansfield Park continues to enchant and delight us as a superb example of a great author's craft.

Pride and Prejudice

Spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of a family of five daughters, and with no male heir, the Bennet estate must someday pass to their priggish cousin William Collins. Therefore, the girls must marry well—and thus is launched the story of Elizabeth and the arrogant bachelor Mr. Darcy, in a novel renowned as the epitome of romance and wit. Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s masterwork, an entertaining portrait of matrimonial rites and rivalries, timeless in its hilarity and its honesty.

Northanger Abbey

During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works.

Sanditon and Other Stories

Sanditon might have been Austen’s greatest novel had she lived to finish it. Its subject matter astonishes: here is Austen observing the birth pangs of the culture of commerce, as her country-bred heroine, a foolish baronet, a family of hypochondriacs, and a mysterious West Indian heiress collide against the background hum of real-estate development at a seaside resort.

The Watsons, begun in 1804 but never completed, tells the story of a young woman who was raised by a rich aunt and who finds herself shipped back to the comparative poverty and social clumsiness of her own family.

The novella Lady Susan is a miniature masterpiece, featuring Austen’s only villainous protagonist. Lady Susan’s subtle, single-minded, and ruthless pursuit of power makes the reader regret that Austen never again wrote a novel with a scheming widow for its heroine.

The special joy of this collection lies in Austen’s juvenilia–tiny novels, the enchantingly funny Love and Friendship, comic fragments, and a (very) partial history of England–romping miniatures that she wrote in her teens. Their high spirits, hilarity, and control offer delicious proof that Austen was an artist “born, not made.”