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Melvyn Bragg

Janet Todd

John Mullan

Emma Clery

Simon Tillotson

In Our Time: Emma

Emma

19/11/2015

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Emma

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emma, the novel by Jane Austen.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." So begins Emma by Jane Austen, describing her leading character who, she said, was "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this, 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.

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