THE year 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, the most celebrated work by Jane Austen. In the novel Austen introduced readers to two of the most beloved characters in English literature: the rich, handsome, and brooding Fitzwilliam Darcy — better known as Mr Darcy — and the intelligent, attractive, and strong-willed woman who proved to be his match, Elizabeth Bennett. In fact, the novel’s opening line is counted among the most easily recognised in literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Austen enthusiasts will agree that the author’s concern with manners, morality, and marriage are just as valid today as they were at the time she first penned them. There is little in Pride and Prejudice, which revolves around the lives of the landed gentry in early 19th-century England, that will not strike a chord with readers living in any part of the 21st century world. This continued appeal of her plot and characters is explained by the fact that Austen wrote about personality types, social truths, and “all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life depends,” (Emma). From 1813 to 2013, Austen’s observations remain permanently valid because human nature itself has undergone very little change. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” Austen writes in Pride and Prejudice.

She wrote at an incredible speed. In just five years, between 1811 and 1816, she published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously in 1818. Although all her novels provide a wealth of social commentary that have gained her great historical importance, Pride and Prejudice remains by far the most popular.

So popular that several adaptations of the novel have been produced for film and television. The most successful among them without any doubt is the 1995 BBC television series with actors Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth in the lead roles. Bollywood also gave it a go with the film Bride and Prejudice (2004) starring Aishwarya Rai.

“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him,” Mr Bennett says about Mr Darcy. Arrogant, moody, and unforgivably rude to Elizabeth the first time he sees her (“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me”), Mr Darcy is transformed for the better over the course of the novel. His snobbery is no match for Elizabeth’s confidence and she wins him over in the end. His willingness to change and respect Elizabeth as an equal has in turn won over countless readers these past two centuries.

In recognition of this, and in celebration of the bicentennial, a larger-than-life statute of Mr Darcy, or Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, was installed in London’s Hyde Park this year in July. Made from fiberglass and 12 feet tall, the statue and its location in the Serpentine lake were inspired by a famous scene from the adapted BCC series in which the hero uncharacteristically dunks himself in a body of water.

Purists will argue that the lake scene does not exist in the novel, but even they must recognise the impactful role that particular TV series and its lead actor have played in making the novel a cultural phenomenon in the late 20th century. Indeed, ever since acting the role, Colin Firth has been closely associated with it. He once admitted to a journalist: “I’m fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut, and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: Mr Darcy Lands On Mars.”

More celebration took place in the same month of July when the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, announced that future £10 notes will carry a portrait of Jane Austen, adapted from a sketch drawn by her sister, Cassandra. Austen’s writing table and writing quills will also feature in the design, as will an illustration of Elizabeth Bennett examining all the letters which her sister Jane had written to her. The Austen banknotes will start to appear in 2016. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne remarked that the move “shows sense and sensibility.”

It’s a little ironic, though, that Austen will feature on banknotes. After all, she lived in a time when women were dependent on marriage to ensure economic security and social standing. As the author admitted in a letter to her niece: “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.” She herself earned almost nothing from her novels and, along with her sister and their widowed mother, depended on her cash-strapped brothers for financial support.

Austen never married and she almost never travelled outside of the Hampshire county where she was born. She lived her entire life in a small town surrounded by her immediate family; her sister Cassandra was her closest friend and confidante, while her brother Henry acted as her literary agent. At the time of her untimely death at the age of 41, Austen had been unwell for more than a year. While financial stress probably played a part, researchers are not sure about the exact nature of her illness. One argues the author succumbed to tuberculosis brought on by drinking unpasteurised milk; others have listed a form of typhus, Hodgkin’s disease, and Addison’s disease as possible causes of death. Although this great English writer did not have a long life, the two much-loved characters created by her were fortunate to enjoy a happy ending.

Pride and Prejudice ends on these words: “With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”