"It is a truth universally achknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

So begins "Pride and Prejudice", Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners -- one of the most popular novels of all time -- that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.