In-the satiric love story Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen portrays her heroine Lydia Bennet as an intelligent and spiritedly free-wheeling young woman, attracted to a proud and wealthy man against whom she is intensely prejudiced from the very beginning of their association.

Austen's colourful characters living in a small English Country village are life-like the cynic Mr. Bennet, the dull-witted Sir William Lucas, the pedantic Mary Bennet and the conceited Mr. Collins et al. Whilst Austen's abhorrence is reserved for the un-ladylike conduct of one woman, or the blockheaded oafishness of another character, she heaps accolades on the very British proclivity towards decent deportment & good common sense.

Highly acclaimed Pride & Prejudice is in remarkable contrast with the typically violent thrillers or extremely sentimental novels of her era.

About the Author

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on July 18, 1817. As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma(1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.