Jane Austen HC Classic Collection (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Overview

Now you can own all six of Jane Austen's literary masterpieces—for less than $40! All of the romance, suspense, adventure, and wit that has made Austen a literary icon is gathered in these beautiful hardcover Barnes & Noble Classics editions. This bundle includes:

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and Sensibility

Emma is the story of the eponymous Miss Woodhouse who, having lost her close companion, Anne Taylor, to marriage, sets out on an ill-fated career of match-making in the town of Highbury. Taking as her subject the pretty but dreary Harriet Smith, she manages to cause misunderstandings with every new tactic she employs. Though precious and spoiled, Emma is charming to all around her. It takes her some time to learn her lesson and profit from spending less time worrying about how other people should live their lives and focus on her own.

From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park deals with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the quintessential "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country ways of Mansfield Park.

A spirited comedy of manners begins when Catherine Morland meets and falls in love with a young clergyman and is invited to be a guest at Northanger Abbey, the family's country estate. A wonderfully entertainingcoming-of-age story, Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody." Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

In Persuasion, the personable Captain Wentworth reappears in Anne Elliot's life several years after she had been persuaded to break off their engagement, and he makes no secret of his angry indignation. As they come to know each other again, their feelings are rekindled. There are many obstacles in their path, however, amongst them Anne's egotistical, snobbish father, Sir Walter and his heir, the duplicitous William Elliot. Jane Austen's last completed novel sees her usual deft social comedy threaded with a more serious note in this love story of second chances and reconciliation.

In a remote village in Hertfordshire, England, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are his headstrong second daughter, Elizabeth Bennet, and a stoic aristocrat named Fitzwilliam Darcy. A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and Prejudice is also a sumptuously detailed picture of contemporary society, which, in its exploration of manner and motives, has a great deal to say about the society of today. Austen's best-loved novel is a memorable story about the power of reason, and above all about the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.

Two sisters of opposing temperaments—but who share the pangs of tragic love—provide the subjects for Sense and Sensibility. Elinor, practical and conventional, is the epitome of sense; Marianne, emotional and sentimental, the embodiment of sensibility. To each comes the sorrow of unhappy love. Elinor desires a man who is promised to another, while Marianne loses her heart to a scoundrel who jilts her. Their mutual suffering brings a closer understanding between the two sisters — and true love finally triumphs when sense gives way to sensibility and sensibility gives way to sense.

Barnes & Noble Classics include new introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars; biographies of the authors; chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events; footnotes and endnotes; selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work; comments by other famous authors; study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations; bibliographies for further reading; and indices & glossaries, when appropriate.