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ideas · 1813

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen
B2 · CEFR 30 days ~10 min / day pages original
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English Lit
Pride & Prejudice
Jane Austen
Read it in
🇬🇧English 🇫🇷French 🇪🇸Spanish 🇩🇪German 🇮🇹Italian 🇵🇹Portuguese 🇳🇱Dutch
Same book · seven languages
About this book

Twenty-five days with Pride and Prejudice.

Five sisters live in a small English manor in the years just before the Napoleonic Wars. Their father is a witty country gentleman, their mother a foolish woman whose only project is marrying them off. When two wealthy young men move into the neighbourhood, the second daughter — Elizabeth — and the prouder of the two — Mr Darcy — meet at a ball. They both leave the ball convinced they will never speak again.

Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in 1813 in the corner of a small drawing room, hiding the manuscript under a blotter when servants entered. The book is the most-read English novel of the nineteenth century and the model for almost every romantic comedy since. Its English is precise, ironic, and quietly devastating — a sentence will praise a character at face value and demolish them in a subordinate clause.

Storica's B2 adaptation keeps the Bennet family intact, the famous opening sentence intact, the proposal scene at Hunsford intact, and the second proposal at Pemberley intact. What is trimmed is the very long Regency-period digressions about entail, settlements, and pin money. What stays is everything that made the book famous — the dialogue, the irony, and the slow correction of two people who started badly.

Why B2

Why this book at B2.

Austen's English is the deep end of B2 reading. Sentences run long, the irony is dry, and the vocabulary belongs to a class — gentry, settlement, pin money, entail — that does not appear in modern textbooks. But the structure of the prose is profoundly logical: subject, verb, object, qualifier. Once you have the rhythm of an Austen paragraph, you have the rhythm of every English novel for the next hundred years.

The cast

Who you'll meet.

Elizabeth Bennet
the second of five sisters; quick-witted, easily wrong about people, the heroine of the book
Fitzwilliam Darcy
the proud master of Pemberley; insults Elizabeth at the first ball; spends three hundred pages becoming someone she could love
Jane Bennet
the eldest sister; gentle, beautiful, in love with Mr Bingley from the first chapter
Mr Bingley
Darcy's wealthy friend who rents Netherfield; in love with Jane and easily talked out of her
Mr Bennet
the father; ironic, distant, and one of the funniest characters in English
Mrs Bennet
the mother; vulgar, embarrassing, never not on stage; will marry her daughters off if it kills her
Mr Wickham
a charming officer in the militia; a liar; the antagonist Elizabeth most badly misjudges
Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Darcy's aunt; rich, imperious, and the catalyst — through her own bad behaviour — of the second proposal
Words you'll meet

Vocabulary themes.

Country society
the ball, the assembly, the parsonage, the estate, the carriage, the neighbourhood
Marriage and money
the engagement, the proposal, the settlement, the entail, the fortune, the dowry
Letters and manners
the correspondence, the gossip, the propriety, the connection, the introduction
Family and rank
the gentleman, the gentleman's daughter, the relations, the clergyman, the governess
Pride, prejudice, feeling
pride, prejudice, esteem, regard, vexed, mortified, tolerable
What you'll practise

At B2, you read for real grammar.

Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.

SubjunctiveLiterary registerIdiomatic expressionsLong-form argumentNuance and irony
How a day works

Read a passage. Write back.

01
Read
~5 minutes. The day's passage from Pride and Prejudice, adapted to your level. Tap any word to look it up — the rest stays in the language you're learning.
02
Notice
A single hook waits at the end of the passage — a question only you can answer about what you just read.
03
Write back
80–120 words in your target language. Storica catches the grammar so you can focus on the idea. Your reply joins your journal in this language.
Common questions

Reading Pride and Prejudice, step by step.

Can I read Pride and Prejudice in any language on Storica? +

Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Pride and Prejudice was originally written in English, but you choose your reading language when you start.

What CEFR level is Pride and Prejudice on Storica? +

B2. Upper intermediate. You read literary novels, follow nuance, handle conditional and subjunctive. You can argue, summarise, and reflect in writing. The plateau is behind you.

How long does it take to finish Pride and Prejudice? +

About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.

Do I need to have read the original Pride and Prejudice first? +

No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.

What if I miss a day? +

Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.

Is Pride and Prejudice suitable for absolute beginners? +

Pride and Prejudice is rated B2, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.

Start Pride and Prejudice tomorrow.

Your first 30-day book is free. No card. No streak. Just a passage every morning.

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