Emma: An Annotated Edition [Hardcover]

Emma, perhaps the most technically accomplished of all of Austens novels, is also, after Pride and Prejudice, her most popular one. Its numerous film and television adaptations testify to the worlds enduring affection for the headstrong, often misguided Emma Woodhouse and her many romantic schemes. Like the previous volumes in Harvards celebrated annotated Austen series, Emma: An Annotated Edition is a beautiful and illuminating gift edition that will be treasured by readers.

Stimulating and helpful annotations appear in the books margins, offering information, definitions, and commentary. In his Introduction, Bharat Tandon suggests several ways to approach the novel, enabling a larger appreciation of its central concerns and accomplishments. Appearing throughout the book are many illustrations, often in color, which help the reader to better picture the Regency-era world that serves as the stage for Emmas matchmaking adventures.

Whether explaining the intricacies of early nineteenth-century dinner etiquette or speculating on Highburys deliberately imprecise geographical location, Tandon serves as a delightful and entertaining guide. For those coming to the novel for the first time or those returning to it, Emma: An Annotated Edition offers a valuable portal to Austens world.

Its large size and heavy weight, complemented by thick, wood-textured endpapers, acid-free cream-vellum paper, generous margins and woven bindings suggest an object important in its own right, an object and a form that will not go quietly into the good night. Its rich illustrations range from frontispieces and portraits to caricatures and Regency fashion plates, including a fine one for the Beaver Hat. Tandons explanatory notes are similarly comprehensive and serve to link Austen not only to contemporaries such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft and Charles Lamb, but also to lexical and thematic lines that run backwards, from Samuel Richardson and Henry lc²