Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813, but Jane Austen had worked on the initial draft as early as 1796 as she was visiting her brother at Goodnestone Park in Kent. She was twenty year old by then and had her writing skills already sharpen by a first novel, Sense and Sensibility, and polished by years of reading her prose aloud to family and friends. A few months earlier, she had flirted with Thomas Langlois Lefroy, an Irish law student visiting her neighbours in Steventon, Hampshire. As both lacked financial resources, living out that love was no option.

All first impressions, freshness and self-irony of Jane flew into the manuscript of what remains today one of the most envied works of English literature…