You're in for a treat!

My favourite after P&P is Emma, mainly on account of the characters. The pairing of Emma and Mr Knightley is my favourite in Austen after Elizabeth and Darcy.

After that, I'm fond of S&S. I know that Mansfield Park and Persuasion have their advocates, but it's been so long since I read them that I can't really offer an opinion.

I think you're safe with either S&S or Emma. I've not yet read Persuasion, and MP struck me as less humorous and more serious than the others, so somewhat atypical.

Emma is definitely my favourite.

Mansfield Park was not bad. S&S I enjoyed quite a bit. Emma I have read at least three times, and I think is far better than those first two. P&P I have never been able to "get into", and I think maybe that is because I've watched too many adaptations of it? Not sure. It takes a certain mood for me to enter Austen's world and retain interest, but Emma is always good.

Perhaps I am not an Austen fan, and only a fan of the one novel ;-)

I've not read any Gothic romances, but think Northanger is great.

Emma is a brat.

I'm about halfway through and have to admit that sometimes I get a bit impatient with the very elaborate manners and speech. If Austen were to be dropped into a crowd of contemporary Americans she would probably think she was in hell. Like Bach at a metal concert.

I really liked the newest movie version, Mac. It is Emma. (with the period on the end) If you happened to watch Queen's Gambit on Netflix, the miniseries about the female chess prodigy, the same actress plays Emma. Bill Nighy is her father, and he is a hoot! I'm told that the guy who plays the vicar played Prince Charles on The Crown, but I haven't watched that, he is also quite good.

The 90's movie Clueless is based on Emma, but I've not seen it.

So I'm reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, about halfway through at this point, and I was just thinking about how Austen may be my least favorite of the Victorians. All of the Brontes are more interesting, along with of course George Eliot, and it goes without saying Charles Dickens. The insular teen-age female protagonist world of Jane Austen.....how did this become something that remains a "sensation" to this day when you compare it with more robust and interesting worlds created by these others?

All of that said, I do have a soft spot in my heart for Emma, the book and the movies. Other than that, I say to people wanting to read 19th century English literature, "Ignore Jane Austen and read what was written by the better authors of that period!" :-)

I love Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It's my favorite Bronte novel, although reading Jane Eyre recently I saw more than ever before. I am always surprised at how Christian it is.

As for the popularity of Austen: Mr. Darcy, Mr. Knightley, Capt. Wentworth. She is funny also, and that is something you surely don't see in the Brontes. I had the same experience rereading P&P as JE. I never saw before how much Lizzy is in the wrong.

AMDG

"Austen may be my least favorite of the Victorians."

It's a common error, but Austen's not a Victorian; she's a Regency novelist. She died long before Victoria came to the throne, thus there's a considerable gap in time between her last novel and those of the early Victorians. Chronologically speaking, Austen is much better paired with Scott than with the Victorians (although Scott wrote well into the 1820's, if memory serves).

Hey Rob, I guess I did have a general notion that Austen was before all of these others and closer to the end of the 18th century than to the Victorian writers. Reading her is certainly different, but then reading Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, and Jonathan Swift are not at all like Austen. Not sure where Sir Walter Scott falls in all of this. I wish I had been as interested a student while working on my English degree as I am as an adult!

As an undergrad I took a class called "Development of the English Novel." I can't remember who we started with (Richardson, maybe?) but Austen was second, followed by Dickens and Hardy, then on to the 20th century. The prof was quite insistent on the idea that Austen shouldn't be considered a Victorian, which is why that particular thing stuck with me. He also emphasized her humor, which is one of the main reasons I've always liked her.

I never got the "teenage girl" thing, but then my initial reading of Austen antedates the current manifestation of that phenomenon by quite a few years, and thus did not color my initial reading of her. I can't say I disagree with Stu's view; it's more that it simply doesn't register with me.

Yeah, I'm going to have to watch it, I guess! I remember friends at the time saying it was smarter than it appeared, mainly in the writing, I take it. Maybe I should re-read Emma first though. It's been quite a while.