Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's novels concern the gentle, rural English middle class existence and conventions of the early 18th-century. The author was born into just such a lifestyle on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, a small village in Hampshire, England. Her father, a vicar who supplemented his salary through farming, provided much of her education. Austen's talents were encouraged by her parents and siblings, who provided both a receptive and critical audience for her unpublished work.

Austen began writing Pride and Prejudice in 1796, under the title First Impressions. Completed the following year, it became a family favourite. However, when her father attempted to place the work with a London publisher, it was rejected. The novel first appeared in print in 1813, after Austen had proven herself something of a commercial success with Sense and Sensibility (1811), her first published novel.

Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the most comic of Austen's novels. It concerns the considerable efforts of a couple, Mr and Mrs Bennet, to achieve suitable marriages for their five daughters. The focal point, however, is the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, a man whom she had readily dismissed as an unfeeling aristocrat.

The novel proved even more popular than its predecessor, and was followed by Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). In 1817, Austen was in the midst of composing a new novel, Sanditon (1925), when she was obliged to put down her pen due to ill-health. She died on 18 July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, her last completed novel, were published five months later.