Emma

The opening line tells you everything: Emma Woodhouse "has lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." That comfortable insulation is about to crack. Emma decides she has a genius for matchmaking and sets about rearranging the lives of Highbury's residents, particularly her sweet, malleable friend Harriet Smith. What follows is a dazzling display of self-deception, Emma sees herself as a shrewd observer of human nature while remaining utterly blind to her own heart, her own class prejudices, and the damage her well-intentioned meddling inflicts. Jane Austen, who confessed her heroine was "no one but myself will much like," created something radical: a protagonist whose very intelligence makes her blindness not just tolerable but compulsive. The village of Highbury becomes a stage for comedy of manners at its finest, each character trapped by expectations of class and propriety, by pride, and by the terrible human tendency to mistake imagination for insight. When Emma is finally forced to see herself clearly, the humiliation is earned and the wit has teeth.