Book summary

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is Jane Austen's classic novel about the Bennett sisters and their efforts to garner economic security, for which each must procure a suitable husband. The title refers to the spirited and volatile eldest sister, Elizabeth, who rejects an offer of marriage from heir Fitzwilliam Darcy, whose seeming arrogance and pride blind her to his noble qualities. Parallel plots involve quiet sister Jane's love for stolid Charles Bingley, and the youngest, frivolous sister Lydia's elopement with one of Elizabeth's erstwhile suitors. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY concerns two sisters, Elinor the practical and Marianne the romantic, who are forced to leave their home with their mother and younger sister and live in reduced circumstances in the West of England. The girls must rely on marrying well if they are to survive in the world, and the way in which this goal is eventually accomplished provides the plot of this delightful novel, the first of Jane Austen's to be published.

Media reviews

"Arrange the great English novelists as one will, it does not seem possible to bring them out in any order where she is not the first, or second or third, whoever her companions may be....A little aloof, a little inscrutable and mysterious, she will always remain, but serene and beautiful also because of her greatness as an artist."