It's hard to believe that Jane Austen wrote the sophisticated and acerbic PRIDE AND PREJUDICE when she was only 21 years old, in 1797. Originally entitled FIRST IMPRESSIONS, the novel was rejected, revised, retitled, and finally published--anonymously--in 1813, only four years before Austen's untimely death. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Austen calls on her sharp observations of vanity, venality, pomposity, and downright nuttiness in a story about a respectable but far from wealthy family full of daughters--girls who desperately need to find husbands if they are to have any kind of economic security. The eldest of the Bennett family, Elizabeth, is a bright, opinionated, and complacent young woman whose reaction to an offer of marriage from her wealthy but impossibly arrogant suitor, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is revulsion. But in the course of the story both Elizabeth and Darcy learn important lessons about their own folly and blindness, and about the dangers of superficial judgements. As the two perform their elaborate courtship dance, Austen surrounds them with some of her most uproariously clueless characters--from the wacky Mrs. Bennett to the wonderfully unctuous Mr. Collins, another of Elizabeth's admirers. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is, of course, a highly satisfying and offbeat love story, but it is also an unparalleled examination of human nature at both its best and its hilarious worst. Few readers have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet. Her early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy - who is quite the most handsome and eligible bachelor in the whole of English literature - is a misjudgement only matched in folly by Darcy's arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to truer feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved. Vivien Jones, in her new introduction to this Penguin Classics edition, shows how their romance is inseparable from the important social and political debates of Austen's time, and describes Pride and Prejudice as 'One of the most perfect, most pleasurable and most subtle - and therefore, perhaps, most dangerously persuasive - of romantic love stories.'. Paperback is in acceptable condition and very readable. Even though it has been enjoyed multiple times, all pages are intact. There is some creases on front cover and pages have discolored with age.

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