Through her vivacious and spirited heroines and their circle, she paints vivid portraits of English middle-class life as the eighteenth century came to a close. Each of the novels is a love story and a story about marriage — marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not mere romances; ironic, comic and wise, they are masterly studies of the society Jane Austen observed. The seven novels in this volume contain some of the most brilliant, dazzling prose in the English language.--back coverEmma / Lady Susan / Mansfield Park / Northanger Abbey / Persuasion / Pride and Prejudice / Sense and Sensibility

    Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

    He falls in love with Jane, the oldest Bennet girl. Everything goes well—for a while. Then the handsome bachelor’s proud best friend, Mr. Darcy, ruins everything.Elizabeth Bennet has never hated anyone as much as she hates Mr. Darcy. How could she ever forgive the man who has ruined her sister’s happiness? She knows everything she needs to know about him. He is proud, hateful, conceited, and horrid—and he wants to marry her.Elizabeth and Darcy’s memorable, witty battle of hearts and minds has made Pride and Prejudice a readers’ favorite for almost two hundred years.Readability Note: This Townsend Library Classic has been carefully edited for clarity and readability.Source: townsendpress.com

    At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are his headstrong second daughter Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy—two lovers whose pride must be humbled and prejudices dissolved before the novel can come to its splendid conclusion.

    The study of Jane Austen has been transformed in the last twenty years by readings which have grounded her work in contemporary politics and by feminist critique which has questioned her construction of subject positions for women readers.

    It diverted me exceedingly. I have torn through the third volume; I do not think it falls off. It is a delightful burlesque..." - Jane Austen ""Everybody" has read ["The Heroine"]. There is no one so superlatively unhappy as not to have done this thing. But if such there be - if by any possibility such person should exist, we have only a few words to say to him. Go, silly man, and purchase forthwith '"The Heroine: or Adventures of Cherubina."' There are few books written with more tact, spirit, naivete, or grace, [...] and none more fairly entitled to rank among the classics of English literature than the Heroine of Eaton Stannard Barrett." - Edgar Allan Poe, in "The Southern Literary Messenger" (1835) Young Cherry Wilkinson, the daughter of a farmer, has read one too many Gothic novels. And when she discovers a mysterious fragment of parchment and an antiquated portrait in her father's desk, she becomes convinced that she is a heroine and an heiress, and that the farmer is not her father, but instead an assassin with designs upon her life.Renaming herself Cherubina, she deserts her home and sets off on a mad romp across England, determined to recover her lost domains and unravel her true parentage. But after a series of madcap and hilarious adventures, she comes to find that modern-day English law and society do not always permit a young lady to behave like a character out of a romantic tale. And when a handsome but dissolute young actor learns of Cherry's father's wealth and her mania for Gothic novels and styles himself Lord Montmorenci in an attempt to deceive her into a marriage, Cherubina will need all of her heroine's wit to defeat the nefarious plot!A brilliant comic novel that went through numerous editions in its time and earned widespread critical acclaim, "The Heroine" (1813) has recently been badly neglected and has been out of print for almost a century. This edition features a substantial new introduction by internationally known Gothic scholars Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, the unabridged text of the first edition, and detailed endnotes."