Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet has four sisters, a mother desperate to see them married and a father who hides in his library. When the wealthy Mr. Darcy arrives in the neighborhood, his coldness and her quick judgment set off a slow, funny collision of pride and prejudice.

What keeps the novel alive two centuries on is its irony. Austen watches a society that treats marriage as an economic transaction, and she never lets the reader forget the stakes for women with no inheritance, while still delivering one of literature's great romances.

The dialogue crackles, the secondary characters, from the unbearable Mr. Collins to the formidable Lady Catherine, are unforgettable, and the pacing is gentler than modern readers might expect. Read it for the wit, stay for the slow thaw between two stubborn people.