“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Dark Lord in possession of a desire to rule the world must be in want of a ring.” —Austen writes Lord of the RingsPemberly.com)

Hmm… that’s a bit of a stretch… “a Dark Lord in possession of The Ring must be in want of the world.” But it’s really the women in Pride & Prejudice — and chiefly Mrs. Bennett — who so passionately desire marriage and thus “the ring”. So the delicious irony of Austen’s opening quotation was sacrificed for shallow parallelism. (I’m certainly overanalyzing this. Sorry.)