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Jane Austen was born 250 years ago and remains widely read, but why? The world she inhabited and describes is very remote, so there must be something magical about how she uses words to create a fictional universe. The novel Emma (1815) will serve as our test-case as we delve into its pages to discover Austen’s world and her genius for plotting stories that involve romantic situations. We will need extra tools as well: they are provided by films (Clueless as well as Autumn de Wilde's Emma.), a few scholarly readings, and visits to our BMA museum as well as to the Morgan library. What I am aiming for in this First-Year Seminar is double: to renew or enrich your appreciation of books as long-lasting artefacts made entirely of words, and to help you enter, in your imagination, into a very different reality, which is filled however with aspirations for love and happiness that remain as true now as in her own time. Required for success in this course is a) a willingness to study pages of her text closely (as she wrote to her brother, her literary labors involved a fine brush to create their effects) and b) teamwork leading to oral presentations.