Jane Austen's timeless romance consistently appears on top of "most loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public, and has been adapted into a 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley. "Like all masterpieces of literature, it cannot be digested in one reading."
Austen's level of realism in portraying her three-dimensional characters is unparalleled in English literature.
"Not even Dickens, who used to weep over the deaths of his characters, was more intimate with the creations of his brain than the author of 'Pride and Prejudice' was with hers."
Pride and Prejudice follows Elizabeth Bennet, whose character develops through repercussions of hasty judgements, and who comes to appreciate the difference between superficial and actual goodness.
It advocates marriage for love and not for wealth or social status, in spite of communal and familial pressure.
"Jane Austen's characters are human beings in flesh and blood."
"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
"I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."
~Jane Austen