'It is truth universally acknowleged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife' So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners - one of the most popular novels of all time - that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of 18th century drawing room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian Georgre Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the 'most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author's works,' and Eudora Welty in the 20th century described it as 'irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.'
