The best introduction to Austen’s work is surely the second of the six novels she wrote before her death at only forty-one, Pride and Prejudice, in which she introduces us to Elizabeth Bennet, the wittiest and most vivacious of five sisters on the hunt—if their mother has her way, at least—for husbands. Pride and Prejudice is a marvel of vivid dialogue, winning characters, and lavish settings, but it is by no means frivolous. Austen’s droll observation of the manners and mores of her characters and their society is throughout inscribed with a stately eloquence and poise. To make art out of universally acknowledged truths and the compromises of social convention, both petty and pretty, is a rare gift, and no writer displays it more consistently than Jane Austen.