Archive: Emma

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His ninth choice is the episode on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, first released in November 2015. Austen described her leading character as "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Emma is one of Austen’s most popular novels and arguably her masterpiece, a brilliantly sparkling comedy of manners published in December 1815 by John Murray, the last to be published in Austen's lifetime. This followed Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814), with her brother Henry handling publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817).

With

Janet Todd

Professor Emerita of Literature, University of Aberdeen and Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge

John Mullan

Professor of English at University College, London

And

Emma Clery

Professor of English at the University of Southampton.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (first published 1975; Oxford University Press, 1988)