It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man…

This is the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, and its irony works at once. The next sentence explains that this “truth” is fixed in the minds of the neighbouring families, for whom such a newcomer is “the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” The want belongs to the mothers, not to the rich young man.

The novel then turns to Mrs Bennet, eager to tell her husband that Netherfield Park is let at last. The new tenant is Mr Bingley, a young man of large fortune, and she has five daughters to marry. Mr Bennet’s teasing silences and his wife’s impatience set the tone of the whole book.

Austen first drafted the story in the 1790s under the title First Impressions. Revised, it was published in 1813, and she called it “my own darling child”. Its opening has become a formula endlessly borrowed and parodied, often without its irony.

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 1, opening sentence, 1813

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work