Emma

Original author

Jane Austen

Adapted by

Line by Line Publishing,

Read Emma by Jane Austen in Spanish and English, a parallel text graded reader with audio. Available in CEFR levels A2, B1, B2, and C2.

About this book

Emma Woodhouse is handsome, clever, and rich, and she has decided she knows exactly how everyone around her ought to fall in love. The book opens at Hartfield, where the household mourns a small domestic loss: her beloved governess has just married Mr. Weston, a match Emma proudly claims as her own handiwork. Into this comfortable evening comes Mr. Knightley, the family friend who alone tells her the truth, and who dryly takes apart her claim to have made the match. He is good-natured about it. He is also, almost always, right.

What follows is Emma turning her attentions to Harriet Smith, a pretty, sweet-natured girl of unknown birth whom she takes up as a project. She means to improve Harriet, to steer her away from a farmer's honest proposal, and to arrange a far grander love for her with the ambitious young clergyman Mr. Elton. Every reader can see where this is bound, and that is the pleasure of it. Emma cannot. "You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma," Knightley warns, and the misjudgments quietly begin to pile up.

Jane Austen tells all this with a wry, observing intelligence that lets the reader see straight past the polite dialogue into everyone's private hopes. Highbury fills with its small comedies — a valetudinarian father anxious over the vanishing wedding-cake, an elegant pianoforte arriving from Broadwood's to sit incongruously in modest rooms. And there is Miss Bates, poor and kindly and endlessly talkative, whom the whole village loves without quite being able to say why.

"I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return," Knightley says early on. "It would do her good." A book about a young woman so sure she can read every heart but her own, written by an author who misses nothing, and forgives a great deal.

Available editions

Short, concrete sentences for early learners.

7,112 sentences

Longer sentences and a wider vocabulary.

7,112 sentences

Complex sentences and a fuller vocabulary, close to everyday native reading.

7,112 sentences

Original English — The most complex prose — long, intricate sentences, and advanced vocabulary.

7,112 sentences

Read a sample

Capítulo 1

Chapter 1

Emma Woodhouse era guapa, lista y rica.

Emma Woodhouse was beautiful, smart, and rich.

Tenía una casa cómoda y un carácter feliz.

She had a comfortable home and a happy nature.

Parecía que tenía todas las mejores cosas de la vida.

It seemed like she had all the best things in life.

Había vivido casi veintiún años sin mucha tristeza ni problemas.

She had lived almost twenty-one years without much sadness or trouble.

Emma era la menor de dos hermanas.

Emma was the younger of two daughters.

Su padre era muy cariñoso y bueno con ella.

Her father was very loving and kind to her.

Cuando su hermana se casó, Emma empezó a cuidar la casa de su padre, cuando era muy joven.

When her sister got married, Emma began to take care of her father’s house at a young age.

History

Written by Jane Austen in English
Adapted by Line by Line Publishing in 2026

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