"Emma," published in 1815, is one of Austen's funniest books as well as one of the most complex. Austen famously set out to write a heroine who would be difficult to like at first, and our (anti)heroine Emma Woodhouse certainly fits the bill. Unlike many other Austen heroines, she has nothing material to bother her: she's rich, beautiful, and very powerful in her little corner of the world. Left alone with her hypochondriac father after her older sister and her governess both leave to get married, Emma prefers to meddle in the lives of others (and needle her brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley) rather than do some much-needed self-reflection.
That meddling takes a more dramatic turn when Emma impulsively decides to take Harriet Smith, a young woman at the nearby boarding school, under her wing. As she tries to mold Harriet in her own image, her own flaws come back to cause chaos and heartache for their entire social circle.
As one of Austen's most popular novels, it's also one of the most adapted. Aside from multiple TV adaptations, there have also been two popular feature films: one in 1996 starring Gwyneth Paltrow, and another in 2020 starring Anya Taylor-Joy.
