Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is an audio reading of the novel, with each episode carrying one chapter and titled by its number. In the recent excerpts, nothing is wrapped around the text. An episode starts on the chapter heading and ends on the chapter's last line, sometimes with a spoken end-of-chapter marker. That plainness is useful. A listener looking for a particular scene, like Jane laid up at Netherfield or Wickham's story in Meryton, can go straight to it by number. Chapter 6 shows Darcy's interest in Elizabeth growing against his will. He finds her face made uncommonly intelligent by its expression and is caught by the easy playfulness of her manners, while to her he is still only the man who did not think her handsome enough to dance with. At Sir William Lucas's, she tells Charlotte she will let him know she sees what he is about. Chapter 7 turns to money. Mr. Bennet's estate of two thousand a year is entailed on a distant relation in default of heirs male, and his wife's four thousand pounds cannot make up the shortfall. The same chapter has Mrs. Bennet sending Jane to Netherfield on horseback because rain looks likely and Jane would then have to stay the night. Chapters 8 and 10 keep to the Netherfield drawing room. Jane is upstairs with a bad cold, and the Bingley sisters grieve over it while she is in front of them and forget it once she is not. Offered a seat at loo, Elizabeth takes up a book instead, and when Miss Bingley calls her a great reader who despises cards, she replies that she deserves neither the praise nor the censure. In Chapter 10, Miss Bingley keeps interrupting a letter Darcy is writing, and Darcy and Elizabeth argue over whether giving in to a friend without being convinced does anyone's understanding credit. Chapters 16 and 18 bring in Mr. Wickham and Mr. Collins. Wickham calls himself a disappointed man who was brought up for the church and says the late Mr. Darcy, his godfather, meant a valuable living for him, while Mr. Collins is taken with the size and furniture of the room. At Netherfield in Chapter 18, Elizabeth looks in vain for Wickham among the red coats and suspects he was left out to please Darcy. The close of that chapter belongs to Mrs. Bennet, who weighs Mr. Collins as a match for Elizabeth and finds him eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield. The comedy, and the edge beneath it, stay in Austen's own sentences, down to Elizabeth's parting remark that the picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth.