Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.
Steven Marcus is George Delacorte Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Columbia University and was Dean of Columbia University from 1993-1995. He is also the author of Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey and Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis and has edited, together with Lionel Trilling, the one-volume edition of Ernest Jones's The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud. His essays and reviews have appeared in many periodicals, including Commentary, The New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, and The New Statesman.