It took me a while to read Emma, I'm glad I didn't drop it. This time period is a joy to read about. The subtlies of society are intriguing and the hierarchy is new to me. Did people of this time actually spend so much time socializing?

Emma is definitely a socialite and for someone so opposed to love, love doesn't seem opposed to her. Matches are made around her, matches are made by her, and matches at times even involve her.

I really enjoyed this book. It's definitely a chick lit or whatever but I love my romance.

Also, am I only one who found Mr. Nightly dreamy? Even his name is gallant and handsome.

'3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on'
Jane Austen's advice, in September 1814, to a niece with literary ambitions, undoubtedly reflected her satisfaction with her own work in progress, a novel in which the village of Highbury provides the setting for the moral and emotional education of Emma Woodhouse, a heroine 'handsome, clever, and rich' but spoiled by 'the power of having rather too much of her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself'. Emma (1816) was the last novel which Jane Austen lived to see through the press, and is perhaps her most perfect and representative work, happily combining the qualities for which she has been most admired: irony, wit, and realism, vivid characterization, moral seriousness, and faultless control of tone and narrative method.

The text is edited by James Kinsley from R.W. Chapman's Oxford edition, with an introduction and notes by David Lodge, and a new bibliography by Margaret Anne Doody.

First: Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

Last: But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.