Pride and Prejudice

Born in 1775 to wealthy parents in Hampshire, England, Jane Austen is best known for her ironic accounts of the British landed gentry from which she arose. Her novels, particularly Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Mansfield Park, mark a literary transition towards 19th century realism, and address with skillful humor and rounded intelligence various institutions of marriage, manners and manicured English society. For her body of work, Austen is widely considered to be the first woman to write great comic novels.

Vivian Heller received her Ph.D. in English Literature and Modern Studies from Yale University. She is author of Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation(University of Illinois Press) and of The City Beneath Us  (W.W. Norton & Company), a history of the building of the New York City subway system. She is an associate at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and is the writing tutor for the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is also a long-standing member of the non-fiction committee of the PEN Prison-Writing Committee, which awards prizes to inmates from across the country.

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