Oxford World's Classics: Pride and Prejudice

'his perfect indifference, and your pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd!' Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and menide down. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity, as misconceptions and hasty judgements lead to heartache and scandal, but eventually to true understanding, self-knowledge, and love. In this supremely satisfying story, Jane Austen balances comedy with seriousness, and witty observation with profound insight. If Elizabeth Bennet returns again and again to her letter from Mr Darcy, readers of the novel are drawn even more irresistibly by its captivating wisdom.

Fiona Stafford is the author of The Last of the Race: The Growth of a Myth from Milton to Darwin (Clarendon Press, 1994), Starting Lines in Scottish, Irish and English Poetry: From Burns to Heaney (OUP, 2000) and the editor of Lodore in the Complete Works of Mary Shelley. She is the editor of Austen's Emma in Penguin Classics.