Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1983, is probably Jane Austen's best-loved work and certainly one of the most enduringly popular of all English novels. In Elizabeth Bennet the author drew a supremely spirited and attractive heroine - 'I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print' - her encounter with the proud Darcy is surely one of the most charming of all love stories. Beneath the delicate and sparkling surface, however, may lie a sense of the oppositions of playfulness and regulation, of energy and order, of Romantic values and Classical virtues, and of the civilized balance between them.

The cover, designed by Germano Facetti, shows a detail from a portrait of Lady Colville by Henry Raeburn, in the collection of J. R. Colville, Esq.

The portrait of Jane Austen inside the cover is a drawing by her sister, Cassandra, in the National Portrait Gallery.

Romance