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About the BookAbout the Author

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the immortal favourites in fiction. Lauded time and again by critics and writers alike, the novel is one of the best of Jane Austen's work. 'A miniature painted on two inches of ivory' as Charlotte Bronte called it, the work represents the limited world of the eighteenth-century English countryside with the rural gentry as the central focus. The world as depicted here is a small one, but typical: it is peopled by ordinary men and women totally absorbed with news of the neighbourhood, exchanging visits, attending balls and dances, getting their daughters married to the most eligible bachelors and wearing the best clothes possible on occasions. It is a simple and peaceful attitude to life, and Jane Austen captures it all, in the best language possible. Difficult to forget, the book captivates us by the sharpness of wit and dialogue. This edition is an abridged version of the original classic, and it is hoped that when students read this, they would be drawn to the original and not only this one, but also the rest of Jane Austen's fiction.

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose realism, biting social commentary and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and best-loved writers in British literature. Austen lived her entire life as part of a large and close-knit family located on the lower fringes of English gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to Austen's development as a professional writer. Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five years old. During this period, she wrote three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1815, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published after her death in 1817, and began a third, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.