EMMA (1815)

In this novel about a headstrong, snobbish, intellectually proud young woman, Austen's genius for ironic comedy is displayed at its peak. The plot involves finding the proper husband for the heroine, but behind the deceptively simple and everyday events lies the author's moral vision of a world in which social responsibility and familial obligation are key virtues, and compromise a necessary response to the irreconcilable opposites encountered in life.

PERSUASION (1818)

In this last completed novel by Jane Austen, the tone is mellow, the atmosphere autumnal; even the satire is noticeably gentler than in her other works. The story of a love affair, which is culminated only after a broken engagement and a separation of eight long and lonely years, Persuasion has a certain melancholy quality despite its finally happy ending.

NORTHANGER ABBEY (1818)

This playful short novel is the story of the unsophisticated and sincere Catherine Morland on her first trip away from home, for a stay in Bath. There she meets the entertaining Henry Tilney; later, on a visit to his family's house she learns to distinguish between the highly charged calamities of Gothic fiction and the realities of ordinary life (which can also be distressing in their way). Like Emma, Northanger Abbey is centrally concerned with tracing the growth of a young woman's mind and the cultivation of her judgment. This book in turn makes fun of the conventions of many late 18th century literary works, with their highly wrought and unnatural emotions; some of this humor derives from the contrast between Catherine Morland and the conventional heroines of novels of the day.