Pride and Prejudice

"Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!" "How so? how can it affect them?" "My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them." "Is that his design in settling here?" "Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes." "I see no occasion for that.

Jane Austen was an English writer. Although Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupations of her bright, young heroines are courtship and marriage. Austen herself never married. Her best-known books include *Pride and Prejudice* (1813) and *Emma* (1816). Virginia Woolf called Austen "the most perfect artist among women.