India, May 9 -- Early on in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) is a one-sentence description of Mrs Bennet, the protagonist's mother: "The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news."

It's an economical sentence, two clauses, with a semicolon balancing business and pleasure, and paints an instantly recognisable picture of a person most of us remain familiar with, more than two centuries after the line was written (not to mention half a world away).

That's the lure of Austen: an eye for people.

All we are told about the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet's appearance, meanwhile, is that she has dark eyes, her teeth are "tolerable" and her face is "thin", yet it is impossible to read Pride and...