Mrs. Bennet has five unmarried daughters and one fixed idea — that a rich single man must be in want of a wife — and when two arrive in the neighbourhood, her sharp second daughter Elizabeth finds herself sparring with the haughtiest of them, each misreading the other with perfect confidence. Austen turns a marriage plot into the wittiest study of first impressions ever written, where pride and prejudice turn out to be two names for the same failure to see clearly. The most beloved comedy in English — and, quietly, one of its most exacting.