Mr. Bennet's five eligible daughters will never inheret their father's money. Neither will their scatterbrained mother. The family fortunes are destined, in the absence of a male heir, to pass to a cousin, William Collins, a pompous parson. Should one of the daughters marry him? Or is there a chance for the rich empty-headed bachelor Charles Bingley? And what about the aristocratic and supercilious Fitzwilliam Darcy? Yet both these men seem less exciting than the handsome young militia officer George Wickham--a man as profligate as he is poor.