Emma is about young people trying to find suitable partners and learning to get on with each other. Emotional and sexual attractions are present throughout, though vividly implied or suggested rather than ploddingly gone into. The novel...

Jane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty-two years old. It was...