Pride and Prejudice: History and Key Facts

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by English author Jane Austen. Written when she was aged 20–21, it was her third novel written and became the second to see print when it was published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.

Her father, Mr Bennet—owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire—has five daughters; but this estate is entailed and so can only be inherited in the male line. To his regret, he has failed to save out of the income from the Longbourn estate to provide for his daughters. From the Bennets' perspective, it is imperative that at least one of their daughters marry well to support the others, which is a primary motivation driving the plot.

Pride and Prejudice has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literature. For more than a century, dramatic adaptations, reprints, unofficial sequels, films, and TV versions of Pride and Prejudice have portrayed the memorable characters and themes of the novel, reaching mass audiences.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Pride and Prejudice by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.