<b>EMMA JANE AUSTEN</b><br> <p>Twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse is comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and the right to manage other people's lives--for their own good, of course. Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton--and ends with her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life's more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured.<br> <br> Austen's comic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she could use it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us a dazzling gallery of characters--some pretentious or ridiculous, some admirable and moving, all utterly true.</p>