Jane Austen's second novel appeared in three volumes from publisher Thomas Egerton, credited only to 'the author of Sense and Sensibility' since Austen never saw her name attached to her work during her lifetime. The novel's wit, social observation, and enduring romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy made it one of the most beloved works in the English language.
Austen had sold the manuscript, then titled 'First Impressions,' outright to Egerton for £110, a decision she reportedly regretted once the book proved popular, since she would earn no further royalties as it sold through multiple print runs. She had actually written an early draft years before, around 1797, but it took over a decade and a rewrite for the novel to reach print.
Austen's own assessment of her heroine was famously affectionate: she wrote to her sister Cassandra that she thought Elizabeth Bennet 'as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print,' and confessed she hardly knew how she could tolerate people who disliked the book. Contemporary reviews were warm, and the novel sold well, though Austen, working anonymously, received little public acclaim in her own lifetime; she died in 1817 without ever being publicly credited by name as one of England's greatest novelists.
The book's opening line, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,' remains one of the most quoted sentences in English literature, a template of ironic social comedy that shaped the modern romantic novel for the two centuries since.