Pride and Prejudice

A truth universally acknowledged

The Bennets of Longbourn have five daughters and no son, and because the estate must pass to a male cousin, the girls need to marry. So when a rich young man, Mr Bingley, rents the nearby house of Netherfield, Mrs Bennet is delighted. Bingley is charming. His friend Mr Darcy, even richer, is cold and proud, and at the first ball he declares that Elizabeth, the second Bennet daughter, is not handsome enough to tempt him. Elizabeth overhears, laughs, and decides she dislikes him. She is clever, quick and very sure she’s right. Jane Austen published it in 1813 without her name; the title page said only that it was by the author of Sense and Sensibility.

Why it works for learners

Pride and Prejudice is mostly conversation: visits, dinners, dances, letters and arguments. Dialogue is the most useful kind of text for a learner, and Austen’s is among the best. The vocabulary of manners, money, family and feeling is precise and still useful today: polite, proud, income, marriage, visit, opinion.

But Austen rarely says exactly what she means. Her narrator is ironic, her characters say one thing and mean another, and much of the comedy lives in the gap. That is the hardest thing to catch in a foreign language.

Which level to start at

B2 and up is where the book comes alive, because there you can hear the irony. A B1 edition gives you the story and the romance clearly, a fine first read, though some of the jokes will pass you by. At C1 and C2 the reward is Austen’s own style, with its balanced sentences and sharp turns. Use the sentence translation when a line seems too polite to be true; it often is.

Read next

• Jane Eyre, a heroine with Elizabeth’s independence and none of her advantages
• Little Women, more sisters, more marriages, more opinions
• Wuthering Heights, love in a far wilder key