Neither should Austen's talents as a narrator be overlooked. Those who know her work only from films and television series miss out on her waspish asides and barbed observations. The unkind would say she was a classic disappointed Georgian spinster; those who know better observe in her a degree of perspicacity only equalled a century or more later by Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Seldom has an author engaged her audience more effectively than with the opening lines of 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." And the opening line of Emma is a wonderful wink at the reader: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." From that moment you just know it is all going to go wrong.