Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's 1813 novel follows the five Bennet sisters in the English countryside, whose mother thinks of nothing but marrying them off, since the family estate must pass to a male cousin, the absurd clergyman Mr Collins. When the rich, amiable Mr Bingley takes a house nearby and falls for the eldest, Jane, his friend Mr Darcy declares at a ball that Elizabeth, the sharp, ironic second daughter, is 'tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me'. She takes an instant dislike to him, believes the lies of the charming Mr Wickham, and refuses Darcy's insulting proposal, before a letter, a visit to his estate and her youngest sister's elopement show her how wrong she has been.

Austen first drafted the novel in the 1790s as 'First Impressions'. A witty comedy of love, money and class, it is one of the best-loved novels in the world, and its opening line about a single man in possession of a good fortune is among the most famous in fiction. Her first published novel was Sense and Sensibility.

Jane Austen (1775–1817) grew up in a crowded rectory in the Hampshire village of Steventon, the seventh of eight children, writing comic sketches to amuse her family. She never married, lived quietly in Bath and then in a cottage at Chawton, and published her novels anonymously, signed only 'By a Lady'. She died in Winchester at forty-one.

Her six novels, from Pride and Prejudice to Emma and Persuasion, turn the small world of country families, marriages and money into sharp, funny studies of character. Her ironic narration, slipping in and out of her heroines' thoughts, changed the way novels are written.