Beautiful, clever, and rich, Emma Woodhouse has decided she has no interest in marriage for herself, but every interest in arranging it for everyone else.

Her matchmaking scheme for Harriet Smith unravels into misunderstanding after misunderstanding, drawing in a widening circle of Highbury's residents, including the one man whose opinion of Emma actually matters: her old friend Mr Knightley.

More than two centuries on, Emma is Jane Austen's most tightly constructed novel, a comedy where every clue is in plain sight, and only the heroine fails to read them.