Jane Austen (1775–1817), Pride and prejudice: a novel London, 1813 EL3 .A933p v.1

Arguably one of the most well-recognized first lines in English literature, Jane Austen’s opening to Pride and Prejudice tells the astute reader what to expect from her novel. Rather than a straightforward romance, or a sentimental novel of the late eighteenth century, Pride and Prejudice, like the rest of Austen’s novels, is one of subtle, playful and tongue-in-cheek critique and commentary on her social world, that of the British landed gentry. Her use of irony, realism, and satire allowed Austen to deftly highlight the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of
polite society and the ways in which this society, its laws, manners, customs and duties, constrain and shape her heroines.