“I hope, my dear, that you have ordered a good dinner to-day, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party.” This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 13 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which the cousin who will one day turn the Bennets out of Longbourn invites himself to stay for a week.

Mr. Collins’s letter precedes him: a masterpiece of pompous apology in which he regrets the entail, boasts of his patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and offers to make the girls every possible amends. Mr. Bennet has high hopes of him at once, for a mixture of servility and self-importance so promising cannot disappoint. It does not.

• The letter announces its author completely: ordained, comfortably beneficed, distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and extending an olive branch to heal the breach between the families.
• Elizabeth puzzles over the blend of grovel and pomp and doubts he can be a sensible man; her father cheerfully expects the reverse and is impatient to enjoy him.
• Mr. Collins arrives punctually at four o’clock: heavy-looking, grave, and formal at twenty-five, and he promptly offends his hostess by asking which of his fair cousins cooked the excellent dinner.
• Mrs. Bennet, who began the day railing against the entail as usual, softens with remarkable speed once the letter hints that its author may come courting one of her girls.