Pride and Prejudice
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
So begins Pride and Prejudice,
Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners--one of the most popular novels
of all time--that features splendidly civilized sparring between the
proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out
their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room
intrigues.
Jane Austen
Born
in Hampshire, The United Kingdom
December 16, 1775
Died
July 18, 1817
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Jane Austen (16 December 1775 –
18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction,
set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most
widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social
commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and
critics.
Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit
family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She
was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as
through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was
critical to her development as a professional writer. Her artistic
apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about 35
years old. During this period, she experimented with various literary
forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried then abandoned,
and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth.
From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811),
Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she
achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels,
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818,
and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before
completing it.
Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility
of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition
to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic,
highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing
and economic security. Her work brought her little personal fame and
only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in
1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider
public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a
great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a
proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan
culture.
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