Jane Austen began to write Emma in January of 1814 and finished it a little over a year later, in March of 1815. At the time of completion, Austen was thirty-nine years old. Emma was published at the end of 1815, with 2,000 copies being printed—563, more than a quarter, were still unsold after four years. She earned less than forty pounds from the book during her lifetime, though it earned more after her death. Austen died a year and a half after publication.

The Institute of English Studies (IES) will host The Jane Austen Society’s Study Day on Emma this Valentine’s Day.  The programme includes talks by Dr Christine Kenyon Jones (King’s College London) on ‘Miss Austen and Lord Byron’; Dr Cheryl Kinney (expert on women’s health in Jane Austen’s novels) on illness as a literary device; Jane Darcy (University College London) will explore Emma as a contemporaneous novel, and author of Jane Austen’s World Maggie Lane discusses, ‘To be an old maid at last: women’s destiny in Emma’.

When: 14 February 2015, 9:30–16:30

Where: Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Find out more about the programme and register here.