By Jane Austen, 1813, eBook Provided by Pennsylvania State University.

Pride and Prejudice belongs to the romantic-comedy genre and is the most famous of Jane Austen's novels, and its opening is one of the most famous lines in English literature —"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Jane Austen: British writer who is noted for her penetrating observation of middle-class manners and morality and her irony, wit, and meticulous style. Her novels include Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816).

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Jane Austen:

Jane Austen, Writer 

• Born: 16 December 1775
• Birthplace: Steventon, Hampshire, England
• Died: 18 July 1817
• Best Known As: The author of Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's novels were witty, warm and ironic portraits of the privileged classes of 18th- and 19th-century England. Her best-known works are Emma (1815), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Sense and Sensibility (1811), though due to the status of women authors at the time, most of her novels were published anonymously. Austen was one of eight children of an English clergyman, and given the accomplishments of her novels she lived a remarkably quiet and domestic life in the rural south of England. She never married and was only 41 when she died. The Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her dashing suitor Mr. Darcy are one of the more famous couples in English fiction.

Austen has long been a favorite of Hollywood; recent movie adaptations include Pride and Prejudice (2005, with Keira Knightley), Emma (1996, with Gwyneth Paltrow) and Sense and Sensibility (1995, with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet). The 1995 Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless is considered a whimsical remake of Emma... The exact cause of Austen's early death has never been clear. In the last year of her life she suffered from fatigue, back pain, nausea and fevers as she gradually faded away. Addison's disease, Hodgkin's disease and tuberculosis have all been suggested as possible causes by modern-day scholars.

FOUR GOOD LINKS

• Jane Austen Society of North America
  They won't be happy until we've all read every word
• The Jane Austen Information Page
  Meat and potatoes info on her works, with commentary
• Jane Austen
  List of online resources for more study
• Jane Austen's Illness
  Fascinating attempt (reprinted from 1964) to diagnose her mysterious fatal illness

External Links:

• Chronology/Calendar for Pride and Prejudice http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/p&p.calendar.html

• Pride and Prejudice, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• Pride and Prejudice, online at Ye Olde Library
• Free audiobook from LibriVox
• Filmography of Jane Austen Adaptations
• Pride & Prejudice timeline
• Pride and Prejudice Literary analysis of the novel
• Free typeset PDF ebook of Pride and Prejudice, optimized for printing at home

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