The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen Volume II: Pride and Prejudice

This is the first of the novels published in 'The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen' series, illustrated with early nineteenth-century plates. From its famous opening sentence, the story of the Bennet family and of the novel's two protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove 'rather too light and bright, and sparkling, ' delights its most familiar readers as thoroughly as it does those who encounter it for the first time. And while she entertains us, Jane Austen teaches us the wisdom of balance, the folly of 'pride' and 'prejudice.'

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in the rectory at Steventon in Hampshire, the sixth child in a family of seven. As a child and young woman she read widely, including Fielding, Sterne, Richardson, and Fanny Burney among novelists, and Sir Walter Scott, Cowper, and Crabbe, her favorite, among poets. Her life was spent in the midst of a lively and affectionate family at her birthplace, Bath, Southampton, Chawton near Alton in Hampshire, and Winchester, where she died and is buried