The Jane Austen novel featuring Harriet Smith is 'Emma'. Harriet is a seventeen-year-old girl whom Emma Woodhouse befriends and attempts to guide through the complicated social and romantic world of Highbury.
Harriet is attractive, kind, and impressionable, but her uncertain parentage makes her social position unclear. Emma persuades her to reject a proposal from Robert Martin, a respectable tenant farmer, because Emma imagines Harriet could marry someone of higher status. Emma then tries to match Harriet with Mr. Elton, badly misreading his intentions and social ambitions.
Harriet's story exposes Emma's errors in judgment, especially her tendency to confuse social rank with personal worth. After several disappointments, Harriet reunites with Robert Martin and accepts his second proposal. The novel was first published in December 1815, although its title page is dated 1816, and it was the last of Austen's novels published during her lifetime.