Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet is the second of five sisters, with a thousand pounds coming to her and no claim on Longbourn, which is entailed on a male cousin. At the Meryton assembly she has sat down for want of a partner when Mr. Darcy — ten thousand a year against Bingley's four or five, and refusing introductions outside his own party — stands near enough for her to overhear what he thinks of her. She decides against him that evening. She is wrong about him, he is wrong about her, and the book takes its time pulling both apart. Visits, two balls, a proposal, a letter, an elopement: almost nothing happens here that is not a conversation. The talk is quicker and less kind than the bonnets on the covers suggest.