Complete works of jane austen ebook

They dealt a lot with women's rights. They were specifically problems with women inheriting money, women finding and having ways to make livings, neglect of education, social evaluations of worthiness based on wealth or income, and so on.

She was one of the first authors to write on these matters in a clear and succinct form, so as to have an influence on other authors and persons of importance. I sometimes struggle to rate things on if their good based on how they're written or whether I enjoyed them personally.

For Austen, it's a clear stars when considering her writing. She's articulate and concise when doling out characters and plots. There's a reason she's considered a classical writer and the label is apt.

However, when considering my enjoyment, it's probably closer to a 3. I'm a typical girl in that I love the romance aspect of stories and the relationships, but I'm just I sometimes struggle to rate things on if their good based on how they're written or whether I enjoyed them personally. I'm a typical girl in that I love the romance aspect of stories and the relationships, but I'm just not a big fan of this time period. I do love historical fiction, all kinds. But it's not my favorite, and I think, after much consideration, that is the reason that I didn't enjoy these more.

Not that I didn't enjoy them at all. I did, especially Emma. I think that one's my favorite. Besides Love and Friendship. But when it comes to classical writers, Austen doesn't hold a candle to Dickens or Rand. I'll probably get crucified for that comment. Ok, I concede that they are very different writers and you can't compare them.

But I've given her a 4 star. Isn't that enough proof I think she's a good writer? Do your research. She has lots of letters, poems, and novellas that many of these books don't include.

You don't want to miss out! View 2 comments. This may not be a "mans" book, but it is a good read. There was a little too much chattiness for my liking at times, but the story resonates with me as it resembles fondly my courtship with my wife.

I see myself in Mr. Darcy prideful and not outgoing , and something of my wife in Lizzy opinionated and strong and strong headed. One of my favorite writers.

Pride and Prejudice the very first book in English I read in my life. At its heart this is another story about an Austen heroine getting to marry, and following her through the rather tortuous process.

Catherine is a naive, somewhat gauche, heroine who is painfully oblivious to the scheming and machinations of those around her. While it is, indeed, much exaggerated there is a sly humour to this that definitely works well for modern readers. Finished Northanger Abbey in this collection. First Jane Austen book that I have read.

Now want to read more by her. Wonderful stories, impeccable writing, lessons in human frailty and strength. Universally great reading. Aug 12, Dr. Sense and Sensibility This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part.

How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.

Pride And Prejudice "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.

Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.

Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason. It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense.

This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well. Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money".

She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist.

Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money. If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour. But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.

The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.

In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassuarance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned the two and the aunt realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.

So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really. Mansfield Park The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained.

Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation. Emma Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme.

It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note. More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives.

Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them hence the gifts of course , and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider.

Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain.

Jackals manage to devour the marriage and the love and even the children on all but physical level. Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late.

Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death. None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults.

She was lucky indeed. Northanger Abbey The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money.

The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings.

The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money. Persuasion The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave.

Someone name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all.

And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al. Lady Susan If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures not excepting west or US for that matter while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law.

But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds.

Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means. Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably.

Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure. A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.

Feb 05, December 31, Watsons One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years. Sanditon This barely begins before it ends. One wishes Austen had lived long enough to finish these few and write some more books as well of course. Austen is delightful as ever, in her way of quite succinctly judging characters she writes about. Parker was evidently an amiable family man, fond of wife, children, brothers and sisters, and generally kind-hearted; liberal, gentlemanlike, easy to please; of a sanguine turn of mind, with more imagination than judgement.

And Mrs. Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed; and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion that whether he was risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless.

Parker promoting Sandition with a faith in sea air and bathing as remedy for every ailment, and necessary to health, on one hand - and his siblings swearing their ill heath is too far gone for them to visit, the latter being quite hilarious, this is already promising entertainment and more, right at the beginning.

Later, it's the young Sir Edward Denham, handsome, and flattering in his attentions to the visitor Miss Charlotte Haywood, who is subject of the author's scrutiny.

There could be no doubt of his devotion to Clara. How Clara received it was less obvious, but she was inclined to think not very favourably; for though sitting thus apart with him which probably she might not have been able to prevent, her air was calm and grave.

Stationing himself close by her, he seemed to mean to detach her as much as possible from the rest of the party and to give her the whole of his conversation. Watsons One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.

Sanditon Austen is delightful as ever, in her way of quite succinctly judging characters she writes about. Parker was evidently an amiable family man, fond of wife, children, brothers and sisters, and generally kind-hearted; liberal, gentlemanlike, easy to please; of a sanguine turn of mind, with more imagination than judgement. And Mrs.

Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed; and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion that whether he was risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless.

Parker promoting Sandition with a faith in sea air and bathing as remedy for every ailment, and necessary to health, on one hand - and his siblings swearing their ill heath is too far gone for them to visit, the latter being quite hilarious, this is already promising entertainment and more, right at the beginning.

Later, it's the young Sir Edward Denham, handsome, and flattering in his attentions to the visitor Miss Charlotte Haywood, who is subject of the author's scrutiny. There could be no doubt of his devotion to Clara.

How Clara received it was less obvious, but she was inclined to think not very favourably; for though sitting thus apart with him which probably she might not have been able to prevent, her air was calm and grave. Stationing himself close by her, he seemed to mean to detach her as much as possible from the rest of the party and to give her the whole of his conversation.

He began, in a tone of great taste and feeling, to talk of the sea and the sea shore; and ran with energy through all the usual phrases employed in praise of their sublimity and descriptive of the undescribable emotions they excite in the mind of sensibility. The terrific grandeur of the ocean in a storm, its glass surface in a calm, its gulls and its samphire and the deep fathoms of its abysses, its quick vicissitudes, its direful deceptions, its mariners tempting it in sunshine and overwhelmed by the sudden tempest—all were eagerly and fluently touched; rather commonplace perhaps, but doing very well from the lips of a handsome Sir Edward, and she could not but think him a man of feeling, till he began to stagger her by the number of his quotations and the bewilderment of some of his sentences.

And she has Charlotte bequeathed with intelligence and common sense of Elizabeth Bennett, rather than the self absorption of Emma. It was done to pique Miss Brereton. She had read it, in an anxious glance or two on his side; but why he should talk so much nonsense, unless he could do no better, was unintelligible.

He seemed very sentimental, very full of some feeling or other, and very much addicted to all the newest-fashioned hard words, had not a very clear brain, she presumed, and talked a good deal by rote. And when he died, I gave Sir Edward his gold watch.

It was no bequest. It was not in the will. He only told me, and that but once, that he should wish his nephew to have his watch; but it need not have been binding if l had not chose it. Very handsome! I have been a very liberal friend to Sir Edward. And poor young man, he needs it bad enough.

For though I am only the dowager, my dear, and he is the heir, things do not stand between us in the way they commonly do between those two parties. Not a shilling do I receive from the Denham estate. Sir Edward has no payments to make me. It is I that help him. He is a very fine young man, particularly elegant in his address. And it is to be hoped that some lady of large fortune will think so, for Sir Edward must marry for money. He and I often talk that matter over.

A handsome young fellow like him will go smirking and smiling about and paying girls compliments, but he knows he must marry for money. And Sir Edward is a very steady young man in the main and has got very good notions. Austen writes candidly about - whether consciously aware, and deliberately writing, or simply taking them as facts of life - arranged marriage and caste systems of England in particular, Europe in general; things that since have been, falsely, identified exclusively with India, in line with Macaulay policy to break spirit of India.

But heiresses are monstrous scarce! Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter Doing so will allow this index to be used with all the many links to the volumes and chapters when you are not connected to the internet:.

Click on the DOWNLOAD button at the top of this file to download the zipped file package to whatever download directory you have set up for your computer. Go to your Download Directory and double-click on the downloaded file h. Then double-click on h ; you will see several directories: you may rename the directory named files to any name you wish, such as AUSTEN.