Distinguished critics examine aspects of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility. Themes explored include manners and morals, comic aggression, knowledge and opinion, gender roles, and the relationship of Austen's novels to William Shakespeare's plays. Essays discuss specifics of the novels and place them within the context of Austen's other works. Characters are examined in depth, as are situations, feelings, and social context. Quotes from the books are used to support interpretations.

Of all Jane Austen's heroines, Emma Woodhouse is the most flawed, the most infuriating, and, in the end, the most endearing. Pride and Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet has more wit and sparkle; Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey more imagination; and Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood certainly more sense--but Emma is lovable precisely because she is so imperfect.

* "Reviews and Criticism" presents a wide variety of perspectives, both contemporary and recent, including essays by Sir Walter Scott, Henry James, A. C. Bradley, E. M. Forster, Robert Alan Donovan, Marilyn Butler, Mary Poovey, Claudia Johnson, Juliet McMaster, Ian Watt, and Suzanne Juhasz. New to this edition are essays by Maggie Lane, Edward Copeland, and Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield, the last of which discusses film adaptations of Emma.

Northanger Abbey, written in Jane Austen's youth and posthumously published, is arguably her most mysterious, imaginative, and optimistic novel. This Norton Critical Edition is the most extensively annotated student edition available.
Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine."

Sense and Sensibility is Austen's first published novel and the one now most scrutinized by historicist and feminist scholars, who offer new, complex readings of the work. The text is that of the 1813 Second Edition (the origins of which can be traced back to 1795). The text is fully annotated and is accompanied by a map of nineteenth-century England. "Contexts" explores the personal and social issues that loom large in Austen's novel: sense, sensibility, self-control, judgment, romantic attachments, family, and inheritance.