Emma Woodhouse is a wealthy, exquisite, and thoroughly self- deluded young woman who has “lived in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” Jane Austen exercises her taste for gently satirie social observation and her talent for investing seemingly trivial events with profound moral significance as Emma tries to arrange a wealthy marriage for her poor friend Harriet, but refuses to recog nize her own feelings for the gallant Mr. Knightley. Though Austen found her heroine to be a person whom “no one but myself will much like,” Emma is her most cleverly woven, riotously comedic, and pleasing novel of manners.