'Jane Austen's Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility' ObserverEmma is young, rich and independent.

Jane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty-two years old. It was originally called First Impressions and was initially rejected by the publishers and only published in 1813 after much revision. She published four of her novels in her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma(1816). Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were both published posthumously in 1818.

Andrew Motion has been a lecturer, editor of the Poetry Review, Editorial Director of Chatto & Windus, Poet Laureate, co-founder the Poetry Archive and was knighted for his services to literature in 2009. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, author and publisher based in New York City. http://leanneshapton.com/