Pride and Prejudice

Listen to audio presented by Literary Affairs: Pride and Prejudice.

View our feature on Jane Austen.

Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet. Her early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy is a prejudice only matched by the folly of his arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to true feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.

@FirstThoughtBestThought Usually a man wills his home to his wife or kids. But sometimes, he wills it to a distant relative, so when he dies, you’re out on your ass.

And then, and THEN, that distant, meddlesome priest of a relative tries to seduce one of your sisters.

Unsure why anyone would want my sisters. All they want is to hit it with the officers – what war are they even fighting in the countryside?

Though my older sister–Jane–is nice. How could she not be? Jane is such a good name. I would like anybody named Jane.

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Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on July 18, 1817.

As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.
Vivien Jones is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Leeds.
Tony Tanner was a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and a professor of English and American literature at the University of Cambridge. He died in December 1998.
Vivien Jones is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Leeds.