The Journal
The best Jane Austen novels ranked
Jane Austen published six completed novels. All of them are good. The question of which to read in what order depends on what you are looking for -- comic plot, moral complexity, emotional directness, or formal innovation. This is a ranking with context for each.
1. Emma (1815)#
Emma is Austen's most technically accomplished novel. The comedy is broader, the character is more complex, and the formal achievement -- keeping the reader as blind as Emma to what is in front of her throughout the novel -- is remarkable. Austen reportedly told her family she was writing "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." She was wrong. Emma Woodhouse is now one of the most beloved characters in English fiction, partly because her flaws are so specific and so forgivable. Best for: readers who have already read Pride and Prejudice and want more.
2. Pride and Prejudice (1813)#
Pride and Prejudice is the most loved Austen novel for reasons that hold up on examination: Elizabeth Bennet is the most immediately appealing of Austen's heroines, Darcy is the archetype of a specific romantic type, and the comedy of the Bennet household is the most reliably funny writing Austen produced. Its place in the popular imagination is not accidental. Best for: first-time Austen readers, or anyone who wants to understand why she is what she is.
3. Persuasion (1817)#
Persuasion was the last novel Austen completed before her death and it shows: it is quieter, more autumnal, and more emotionally direct than any of the others. Anne Elliot is older than Austen's other heroines and her situation is more serious -- she is living with the consequences of a choice she made eight years earlier under pressure that she should have resisted. The letter Wentworth writes to her near the novel's end is the most direct romantic declaration in Austen. Best for: readers returning to Austen after time away, or those who find Pride and Prejudice too light.
4. Sense and Sensibility (1811)#
Sense and Sensibility is Austen's first published novel and is slightly more schematic than her later work -- Elinor and Marianne are partly argument-vehicles as well as characters -- but it has some of Austen's sharpest social observation and the Willoughby plot is handled with genuine psychological insight. Best for: readers who want to see Austen's concerns in early, slightly less refined form.
5. Northanger Abbey (1817, written ~1799)#
Northanger Abbey is Austen's Gothic parody -- a young woman who has read too many Gothic novels arrives at an old abbey and reads sinister significance into everything. It is the funniest of the six novels in places and the most purely comic in intent. Its parody requires some familiarity with the Gothic conventions it is parodying -- particularly Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho -- which is why it sits fifth rather than higher. Best for: readers who have read some Gothic fiction and will recognise what Austen is doing with it.
6. Mansfield Park (1814)#
Mansfield Park is Austen's most morally serious novel and her least loved. Fanny Price is passive where Elizabeth Bennet is witty, earnest where Emma is clever, and principled in ways that contemporary readers sometimes find priggish. The novel's engagement with the slave trade (Sir Thomas Bertram's Antigua plantation is mentioned and then deliberately not discussed) has generated significant modern critical attention. Best for: Austen completists, or readers interested in the moral framework beneath all six novels made most explicit.
Further reading#
For what to read after finishing Austen, what to read after Pride and Prejudice covers the full range of recommendations.
For the life of Austen and the conditions under which she wrote, who Jane Austen was and why people still read her is the companion.