Description

“It is a TRUTH universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a GOOD fortune, must be in want of a WIFE.”

Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice is a classic comedy of manners that satirizes 18th-century society, and particularly, the expectations upon women. This story follows the romantic entanglements of the Bennet sisters, including themes of love, class, and, as one might expect, pride and prejudice.

“The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man, is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage!”

Jane Austen’s Emma is set in early 19th-century England and centers on Emma Woodhouse, whose vanity and social status seem to make her believe herself worthy of meddling in the affairs of others. Her misplaced confidence in her ability to serve as matchmaker leads to romantic misadventures in this comical, witty classic novel.

“The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

In Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—sisters Marianne and Elinor learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you.”

At twenty-­seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

Filled with Jane Austen’s trademark wit, Persuasion is both a delightful romantic comedy and a surprisingly subversive exploration of our need to persuade, and be persuaded by, others.

Jane Austen’s works are in the public domain in Canada and can be printed without copyright infringement.