Perhaps Jane Austen’s most well-loved novel, Pride and Prejudice is a sharply observed comedy of manners set in the English countryside early in the nineteenth century. The Bennets have five daughters to marry off, and few likely prospects, which makes a new neighbor exciting news. As the novel’s first sentence announces, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Yet for Elizabeth Bennet, the most lively and intelligent of the bunch, a courtship with newcomer Fitzwilliam Darcy is very much a matter of resolving issues of “pride” and “prejudice” to reveal true love. Honored in modern-day novels and adapted for film countless times, Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen at her most shrewd, most witty, and most revered.