So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's classic novel of manners and mores in early nineteenth century England.

It was the first French novel of manners published about 1620 and written by a man called Sorel.

Up to that point truth had always been conceived as existing more or less in the novel of manners.

Inside, the mood is one of an elegance precisely modulated to make you feel you have stepped into a 19th-century novel of manners.

Don't ask Dickens for novels of manners.