About Pride and Prejudice

By Jane Austen · first published in 1813 · Romance

Pride and Prejudice opens with one of the most quoted sentences in English and then spends three hundred pages proving it wrong. The Bennets of Longbourn have five daughters and an estate that will pass to a male cousin when Mr. Bennet dies, so the arrival of a rich young bachelor at nearby Netherfield is the biggest news the neighbourhood has had in years.

Jane Austen is not really writing about weddings, though. She is writing about how badly people judge one another. Elizabeth Bennet is quick, funny and sure of her own good sense; Mr. Darcy is clever, honourable and insufferably aware of his rank. Each forms a firm opinion of the other within an evening, and each is mistaken. The pleasure of the book is watching two intelligent people slowly discover that they have been wrong.

Published in 1813, the novel still reads quickly. The chapters are short, most of the story is told through conversation, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s bickering in the first chapter is as sharp as anything written since. This preview contains the first two chapters, from the news about Netherfield to Mr. Bennet’s surprise for his family.