Pride and Prejudice

Pride and prejudice / by Jane Austen ; with a preface by George Saintsbury and illustrations by Hugh Thomson. – Mineola : Dover Publications, 2005.
xxvii, 476 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 9780486440910
“This Dover ed. is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1894 by George Allen.”

1. Courtship -- Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. 3. England -- Fiction. 4. Love stories. 5. Sisters -- Fiction. 6. Social classes -- Fiction. 7. Young women -- Fiction.

823.7

When Mr. Bingley, a “young man of large fortune from the north of England,” buys a house in town, Mrs. Bennet is in a frenzy to get her husband to make a social call on their new neighbor. She wants the Bennets to get there before other families with marriageable young daughters, after all, the Bennets have five in need of being married off! So begins this witty description of leisurely paced domestic scheming that serves as the backdrop for the courtship of the clever and self-assured Elizabeth Bennet by Mr. Bingley’s friend, the proud and aristocratic Fitzwilliam Darcy. And while the reader is aware of Mr. Darcy’s infatuation early in the novel, it takes the heroine completely by surprise half-way through the book. This masterpiece of romantic comedy with its precisely portrayed characters is the template and measure for all the Regency Romances of today.