Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character who ,if provoked, is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp, yet always polite, 18th-century wit. The real point of the book though, the critical question which will keep you fixated throughout, is: will Elizabeth and Mr Darcy hook up? Read this genuine all-time classic and discover the answer while enjoying a story that has charmed generation after generation.

?It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Juliet Stevenson reads Jane Austen's best-loved tale of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy.

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

Fiona Stafford is the author of The Last of the Race: The Growth of a Myth from Milton to Darwin (Clarendon Press, 1994), Starting Lines in Scottish, Irish and English Poetry: From Burns to Heaney (OUP, 2000) and the editor of Lodore in the Complete Works of Mary Shelley. She is the editor of Austen's Emma in Penguin Classics.

2008-07-30 Who am I to critique such a classic work by Jane Austen?

Not someone properly suited for such a task, I can tell you that. What I can do, however, is give an honest and heartfelt account of what I thought of Jane Austen's 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE'. I have always wanted to read some of the classics but have never up until now dug up the courage to actually do so. I thought if I was going to start reading a classic novel Jane Austen would probably be a good author to start with and what better choice was there than her stand out 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' ? I was pleased to find out that I was absolutely right. 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' has to be one of the most romantic novels that I have ever read. The romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy literally made me swoon quite often (and I don't swoon!). Romance mixed with a little bit of drama and Austen's most descriptive prose made it impossible for me to put this book down. Now I see why 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' is on so many people's favorites list because now it is most certainly on mine.