1996 Talkies Award • Best Abridgement
Read by Juliet Stevenson, 1996 Talkies “Reader of the Year” Award-Winner
Arrogant, self-willed and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is 'handsome, clever and rich' and has 'a disposition to think too well of herself'. When she decides to introduce the humble Harriet Smith to the delights of genteel society and to find her a suitable husband, she precipitates herself and her immediate circle into a web of misunderstanding and intrigue, from which no-one emerges unchanged.
Music: Beethoven, Cramer, Purvis
“Punctuated by interludes of classical music. Well paced and nicely produced.”
"Between the abridged recordings of Emma currently available there is no contest: the best has to be Juliet Stevenson's reading. Her voice is mature and reflective, so that her men and women are convincing and natural."
"Stevenson brilliantly employs her theatrical skills to make the characters live and flesh out the heroine's wayward emotional path...excellently abridged and laced with appropriate music."
