This audiobook seeks to uncover something of Emma's extraordinary multivalence through a close reading of the text, setting it in the context of Jane Austen's life, times and literary heritage and looking at the way it has been read and re-read by critics in the two centuries since it was published.

The Book considers what it meant to be a Unitarian in the hungry forties, what Gaskell understood of Chartism and' political economy'; and attitudes to women's rights.