Pride and Prejudice

About Pride and Prejudice

Austen’s comedy depends on the pleasure and danger of quick interpretation. Elizabeth’s wit makes her company engaging, but it does not guarantee that her conclusions are right. Dialogue, letters, and awkward visits repeatedly change the available evidence. Watch the practical pressures surrounding marriage alongside the romantic encounters: income, inheritance, and family reputation affect what different characters can afford to hope for or refuse.

Reading focus

Enjoy the sharp dialogue while testing first impressions against later evidence and the economic pressures shaping each character’s approach to marriage.

This reading edition contains 126,159 words in 62 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: Jane Austen. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

Walt Whitman has somewhere a fine and just distinction between “loving by allowance” and “loving with personal love.” This distinction applies to books as well as to men and women; and in the case of the not very numerous authors who are the objects of the personal affection, it brings a curious consequence with it. There is much more difference as to their best work than in the case of those others who are loved “by allowance” by convention, and because it is felt to be the right and proper thing to love them. And in the sect—fairly large and yet unusually choice—of Austenians or Janites, there would probably be found partisans of the claim to primacy of almost every one of the novels. To…

Read the complete opening section

Reading & download help

Edition details and corrections.