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Pride and Prejudice, first published on 28 January 1813, is the most famous of Jane Austen's novels and one of the first "romantic comedies" in the history of the novel.
The novel was originally titled First Impressions, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. Jane Austen's father wrote to London bookseller Thomas Cadell on November 1, 1797, offering it for publication, but it was rejected unseen by return of post.

Plot :

Mr and Mrs Bennet's five daughters are all unmarried, and when a rich, amiable young man moves into the neighbourhood, Mrs Bennet hopes to secure him as a husband for her beautiful, eldest daughter. The growing relationship, however, is sabotaged by the young man's haughty friend, who regards the match as unsuitable. When the friend in turn falls in love with the second Bennet daughter, his condescending offer is rejected with scorn and the connection seems over.

However, events conspire to bring the various parties together despite the obstacles and misunderstandings that separate them. Pride on one side and prejudice on the other are slowly overcome and the characters come to a better knowledge of themselves and each other.

Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title".

Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen’s works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as “the free representation of a character’s speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character’s thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke.”

After the publication of her first novel, Austen sold the copyright for Pride and Prejudice to Thomas Egerton for £110. Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.