"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  ...