Jane Austen's fourth novel centers on a heroine who is, as Austen said, someone no one but herself will much like. Emma Woodhouse is rich, clever, and convinced of her own matchmaking genius, and the novel traces her education in humility through the comedy of her errors. The prose is so perfectly controlled that each ironic turn reveals more about character than pages of description could. Austen called it her favorite. It is the most purely comic of her novels, and the most sophisticated in its handling of point of view.