'Emma, The Companion Edition' Restores Austen's First-Edition Text, All 55 Chapters, the Prince Regent Dedication, and a Companion That Keeps the Secret

"Emma, The Companion Edition" Restores Austen's First-Edition Text, All 55 Chapters, the Prince Regent Dedication, and a Companion That Keeps the Secret

Collated chapter-by-chapter against the 1816 first edition, with Regency explainers, a guide to the letters and set pieces, and 44 spoiler-fenced discussion questions

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2026, Jane Austen told her family she was taking "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like", the remark survives in her nephew's Memoir of Jane Austen, and two centuries of readers have been proving her wrong, and arguing about Emma Woodhouse, ever since. A new Companion Classics edition, Emma, The Companion Edition, presents Austen's complete Emma, all fifty-five chapters, unabridged, period spellings and all, in the text of the first edition (John Murray, London, December 1815; title page dated 1816), taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #158 and collated chapter-by-chapter against scans of the 1816 first edition. The dedication to the Prince Regent, dropped by many reprints, is restored.

That dedication has a story, and the edition's introduction tells it: the dedication a prince's household in effect invited, and a novelist accepted, from a prince she privately despised. Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes a Who's Who of Highbury, fourteen entries, each with the thread to watch in that character; five Regency explainers: the marriage market, rank and gentility in Highbury, the governess question, letters and visits, and the novel's money, from Emma's thirty thousand pounds to Jane Fairfax's few hundred; a guide to the letters and set pieces the plot turns on, in eight entries, from Robert Martin's proposal letter to the Box Hill picnic; a short life of Jane Austen; an honest note on the period material; a reading schedule; and forty-four discussion questions, thirty-six in chapter-group sets for every stretch of the book, plus a whole-book set, spoiler-fenced throughout, so the novel's central secret stays secret until Austen herself reveals it.

Alongside the book, the Emma, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (25 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: a reading schedule, the Who's Who, the explainers and the letters-and-set-pieces guide, the short life and period note, all forty-four discussion questions arranged in three spoiler-fenced meetings, and notes pages. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/b/4Zl3Q

Emma, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/b/Av9jT, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $16.99; hardcover, $27.99, in a trim adjusted for the edition's 612 pages). The novel's text is public domain worldwide (Jane Austen died in 1817); all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any other edition or adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Emma, The Companion Edition, With an Introduction, Regency Explainers, a Guide to the Letters and Set Pieces, and Discussion Questions, Jane Austen (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first edition (John Murray, London, December 1815; title page dated 1816), via Project Gutenberg eBook #158, collated chapter-by-chapter against scans of the 1816 first edition; 55 chapters; interior proof 612 pages, 6 x 9 in.