Novel · A way to begin
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813
Opening lines
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Five daughters to marry off in a country house that will pass by right to a cousin, for want of a male heir. A rich young man rents the neighbouring estate; he comes to the village ball with a friend richer still, who dances only with his host's sisters and refuses every other introduction. The second of the daughters hears him say that she is not handsome enough to tempt him. She laughs at it, but does not forgive him, and the whole neighbourhood judges him proud.
Context
The book was written between October 1796 and August 1797, under another title and when its author was twenty. Her father offered it to a London bookseller, who declined by return of post, without having seen the manuscript. It lay aside for more than ten years, was taken up again and shortened, and appeared on 28 January 1813 in three volumes, in about fifteen hundred copies, the title page giving it to the author of the previous novel. It is the only one of the novels published in her lifetime for which she sold the rights outright, for a hundred and ten pounds, the publisher keeping all the rest; she wrote that she would have preferred a hundred and fifty, but that they could not both be content.
Who it is for
First published in three volumes, the novel is available in French in several pocket translations, that of Pierre Goubert foremost among them.
Prizes and reception
The entire edition sold out in less than a year; two others followed, in the autumn of 1813 and in 1817, and the book has never ceased to be reprinted since.
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