The novels of the talented writer Jane Austen (1775–1817) are rightly considered classics of British literature. She began her literary work with parodies of the love novels that existed in her time. Her father, the parish priest George Austen, instilled in the future writer a critical view of literature, an ability to analyze texts, and to work with them. He was a well-educated man who provided his two daughters with a great home education. Jane Austen's novels were completely different from the previously existing sentimental works in European literature, which, according to Pushkin's testimony, young ladies like Tatiana Larina were fond of reading at the end of the 18th century. Jane realistically, sometimes with a considerable dose of humor or sarcasm, describes the movements of the human soul, which change little over the centuries. Because of this, the writer became a harbinger of realism in English literature. The loud fame brought to Austen by the novel «Pride and Prejudice» published in 1813. The novel «Emma» was printed two years later; in the 20th century, it was repeatedly adapted for screen. The main character of the novel is a young, wealthy, and extravagant girl who has fun orchestrating other people's marriages, enthusiastically matchmaking her acquaintances and neighbors. The peculiarity of the novel is the subtle English humor. Unlike her heroine, the writer's personal life did not turn out well. Having experienced a brief romance in her youth, she never married. Jane passed away in 1817 at the age of 42, leaving several novels unfinished. Great literary fame came to the writer posthumously.
This edition offers beautiful and detailed illustrations by two English artists, brothers — Charles and Henry Brock, that vividly depict the characters of the novel and the setting in which the events take place. Each of them could have been a character created by the writer, although both lived and created about a hundred years later — at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Charles Edmund Brock was born in 1870. He began illustrating books at the age of twenty, creatively developing the style of Hugh Thompson, who is considered one of the best British masters of book illustration in the second half of the 19th century. Charles Brock achieved great success in this field: in addition to Austen's novels, he worked on line drawings for the works of Swift, Thackeray, and Eliot. Henry Matthew Brock was five years younger than Charles. He studied at the Cambridge School of Arts, also began to engage in illustration, and became a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolors.
