Pride and Prejudice [Paperback]

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

The Vintage Classics Austen series is designed by the writer and illustrator Leanne Shapton and introduced by some of our finest contemporary writers and Austen fans: Alexander McCall Smith, Lynne Truss, Amanda Vickery, Francesca Segal, P.D. James and Andrew Motion.

'The best-loved book by our best-loved novelist'Independent

Elizabeth Bennet is young, clever and attractive, but her mother is a nightmare and she and her four sisters are in dire need of financial security and escape in the shape of husbands. The arrival of the affable Mr Bingley and arrogant Mr Darcy in the neighbourhoos, both single and in possession of large fortunes, turns all their lives upside down in this witty drama of friendship, rivalry, enmity and love.

 • Like Irvine Welsh, I am a great admirer of Jane Austen. --Alexander McCall Smith

 • Another question I've been regularly asked over the past year is what models I had in mind when writingCurious Incident. Was itTo Kill a Mockingbird? Was itCatcher in the Rye? In fact, the book most often in my mind wasPride and Prejudice. --Mark HaddonJane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writingPride and Prejudicewhen she was twenty-two years old. It was originally calledFirst Impressionsand was initially rejected by the publishers and only published in 1813 after much revision. She published four of her novels in her lifetime,Sense and Sensibility(1811),Pride and Prejudice(1813),Mansfield Park(1814) andEmma(1816). Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817.Northanger AbbeyandPersuasionwere both published posthumously in 1818.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenonThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, theIsabel¸