“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” So begins Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and so begins this episode: the complete audiobook of Chapter 1, in which one piece of neighborhood news sets the entire novel in motion.

Netherfield Park is let at last, and Mrs. Bennet has every detail. The new tenant is Mr. Bingley, young, single, and rich, which in her mind makes him the rightful property of one of her five daughters. All she needs is for her husband to pay the first call, and Mr. Bennet, after twenty-three years of marriage, would rather tease her about it. In one short scene of needling dialogue, Austen introduces the sharpest double act she ever wrote.

• The most famous opening line in English fiction announces a universal truth, and within half a page the chapter shows who actually believes it: mothers with five unmarried daughters.
• Mrs. Bennet arrives with intelligence worth repeating: Netherfield is taken by a Mr. Bingley, agreeable and worth four or five thousand a year, due in the neighborhood by Michaelmas.
• Mr. Bennet refuses to promise the crucial first visit, offering instead to send a note consenting to Bingley marrying whichever daughter he likes, with a good word thrown in for his quick Lizzy. Mrs. Bennet objects that Lizzy is not half so handsome as Jane nor half so good-humoured as Lydia.
• Her poor nerves make their first appearance, and Mr. Bennet counts them among his oldest friends. The chapter closes with Austen’s double portrait: his sarcastic humour and caprice, and a wife whose business in life is getting her daughters married.