Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennett is Austin's most casual and undisputed alluring protagonist, and Pride and Prejudice has remained Austin's most popular novel for most of the last two centuries. The story revolves around the possibility that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five daughters will get married: Elizabeth forms a bias against the proud and distant Mr. Darcy; Darcy's charming friend Charles Bingley falls in love with his sister Jane; and the handsome officer George Wickham has a constant affection for Elizabeth and his sister Lydia. Irvine's great preface places the novel in the context of the literary and intellectual history of the period and deals with important background issues in England, such as early nineteenth-century class relations and the exclusion of women from property and power.
