Hey- I'm putting up a poll for the next week or so for Heather U. She wants to read a Jane Austen for her month, and wonders what everyone would prefer. So check out the poll over there --> and give her your choice- they are all great though, how can we choose? :0) love jane austen
(You can choose more than one book on the poll)
Here's a link to a good website on Austen, with all of her books free online.
here are plot summaries for the books from pemberley.com:
Pride and Prejudice:
"First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has consistently been Jane Austen's most popular novel. It portrays the initial misunderstandings and later mutual enlightenment between Elizabeth Bennet (whose liveliness and quick wit have often attracted readers) and the haughty Darcy. Jane Austen wrote in a letter about Elizabeth, "I must confess that I think her as delightful a character as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know".
Sense and Sensibility:
This novel contrasts two sisters: Marianne, who, with her doctrines of love at first sight, fervent emotions overtly expressed, and admiration of the grotesque "picturesque", represents the cult of "sensibility"; and Elinor, who has much more "sense", but is still not immune from disappointments. Despite some amusing characters and true Jane Austen touches, it is not generally considered to be her best novel. According to Cassandra, it was probably the first of the novels to be started (sometime before 1797, under the early name Elinor and Marianne); it was worked on in 1797, and probably again heavily revised before publication in 1811."
Persuasion:
This relatively short novel, her last, was written in the last few years of Jane Austen's life, and published only after her death in 1817 (though she described it, in a letter of March 13 1816, as "a something ready for publication", she probably would have revised it further, if she had not already been ill with her eventually fatal disease by the time she stopped working on it). It involves an older heroine than any of her other novels do (Anne Elliot is 27), and is also the only novel whose events are explicitly dated to a specific year (1814-1815). Eight years before the novel begins, Anne Elliot (whom Jane Austen described in one of her letters as a "heroine [who] is almost too good for me") had been persuaded by an older friend of the family, whom she respects, to give up her engagement to the then-poor Captain Wentworth. Like Mansfield Park, this novel has a number of characters who are in the navy (two of Jane Austen's brothers were sailors), and several warm-hearted naval families are attractively depicted; these contrast favorably with Anne's own family, in which she is overlooked by her vain and rank-proud Baronet father and her cold and selfish elder sister.
Emma:
Emma, published in 1815, has been described as a "mystery story without a murder". The eponymous heroine is the charming (but perhaps too clever for her own good) Emma Woodhouse, who manages to deceive herself in a number of ways (including as to who is really the object of her own affections), even though she (and the reader) are often in possession of evidence pointing toward the truth. Like Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, she overcomes self-delusion during the course of her novel. The book describes a year in the life of the village of Highbury and its vicinity, portraying many of the various inhabitants.
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