PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice has always been, since its publication in 1813, Jane Austen's most popular book. The story of a sparkling, irrepressible heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, the behaviour of whose family leaves much to be desired, and Mr. Darcy, a very rich and seemingly rude young man who initially finds Elizabeth 'tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me,' is, in the words of the Penguin Classics edition editor Tony Tanner, a novel about how a man changes his manners and a woman changes her mind. Through the ages, its chief delights for readers have been its flawed but charming heroine ('I think [Elizabeth] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print,' Austen herself wrote to her sister, Cassandra); its humorous treatment of a serious subject; brilliant and witty dialogue laced with irony; a cast of humorous minor characters; and Austen's nearly magical development of a complex but believable love relationship between two complex people.

Critics have pointed to many ways in which Pride and Prejudice represents Austen's development and greater mastery of technique and artistry over Sense and Sensibility; perhaps the chief being that the conflict of the story is of the central characters' own making; and that a lively narrator more often appears to present material and to offer comment.