Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice: "By a Lady"

Jane Austen was twenty-one when she finished the manuscript for First Impressions and nearly thirty-eight in 1813 when the novel emerged in print, fully formed, as Pride and Prejudice. As with its predecessor, Sense and Sensibility, Austen earned a small sum of money with the sale of the novel and was credited as its author on the first-edition title page with three simple words: "By a Lady." The edition promptly sold out, as did a second edition printed the same year that bore the author's name. From 1833 to the present, Pride and Prejudice, like all of Austen's novels, has been continuously in print. One of the most loved, and widely read, pieces of fiction ever published, Pride and Prejudice has delighted academic and general readers alike with its intricate narrative structure, sparkling prose, and witty dialogue for nearly two hundred years.

The novel has been described as a simple "Cinderella story"; a comedy of manners that rivals Shakespeare for its characterization and precision of language; a social satire that comments on the class and gender conditions of life in Britain during the early nineteenth century. Perhaps the reason so many readers return to this book time and again is that its carefully crafted prose lends itself to such a broad range of interpretations. With each reading we discover something new, and unexpected. It is a book that grows with us. Though Austen creates a very vivid and authentic portrait of her world, the story at its heart is so human -- the quest for true love and happiness -- that it transcends time and place. We are all intimately acquainted with the struggle. And we yearn for a happy ending.

Austen is credited with creating some of the most memorable characters in English literature, as G. H. Lewes noted in his 1852 essay, The Lady Novelists: "To read one of [Austen's] books is like an actual experience of life: you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel something of personal affection towards them." This is certainly the case with Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice. She is beautiful, quick-witted, and though "not yet one-and-twenty," has an ironic eye and clarity of thought that suggests someone much older. We trust her immediately, implicitly. And though we may learn she's not so infallible as she seems at first glance, she is human, and our favorable first impression is never disappointed.

The Life and Work of Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in the small village of Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh child of the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. She had six brothers -- James, Edward, Henry, Charles, Francis, and George -- and one sister, Cassandra, with whom she remained very close throughout her life. Though the family was not wealthy, her father's position as a clergyman provided the Austen family with a comfortable middle-class income (comparable to the Bennet household in Pride and Prejudice) and full rein of the English countryside we see depicted in her novels.