Author of Pride and Prejudice, mistress of the novel of manners
An English novelist who, with her exquisite rendering of marriage and manners in gentry society, founded the modern novel of manners. She never left the English countryside, yet turned the courtships, misunderstandings, and proprieties of the drawing room into classics of human insight. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Darcy move from mutual prejudice to understanding, and her witty dialogue and ironic touch remain unmatched. Under her pen there are no earth-shaking events, only the subtle contest between decorum and true feeling — which is exactly the eternal subject.
Pride and Prejudice opens: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." With one seemingly earnest line of irony, Austen lays bare the calculation behind the marriages of her age. Her sharpness never comes by raising her voice, but hides in the most composed irony.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.