Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's most liberated and unambiguously appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen's most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: Elizabeth forms a prejudice against the proud and distant Mr. Darcy; Darcy's charming friend Charles Bingley falls in love with her sister Jane; and the handsome officer George Wickham forms attachments successively to Elizabeth and to her sister Lydia. Irvine's extensive introduction sets the novel in the context of the literary and intellectual history of the period, and deals with such crucial background issues as early-nineteenth century class relations in Britain, and female exclusion from property and power. Jane Austen was an English novelist and whose social commentary and masterful use of both free indirect speech and irony eventually made her one of the most influential and honoured novelists in English literature. Her novels were all written and set around the Regency Era. Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters and six brothers of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. Two of her brothers, James and Henry, followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy, while two other brothers Francis and Charles both pursuedn naval careers. A fifth brother, George, had a disability, and did not live with the family. Austen's sister, like her mother, was named Cassandra. Austen never married and died at age 41.