Pride and Prejudice

Name: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen

Jane Austen

— 1813 —

“

Austen invented the modern marriage plot and the ironic narrator in the same novel, in 1813.

The record

Time
An eveningA season
351 pages, about 7 hours: about the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
Mr. Darcy insults Elizabeth at a dance in the book’s opening chapters.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 10 reviews from critics and book blogs, 2 credit the plot and 4 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
A reader recommends Emma, 457 pages, over Pride and Prejudice for more interesting, mature relationships.

on ordinary life
“That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.”
Sir Walter Scott · journal entry, 14 March 1826
on the minor characters
“the most minor characters are portrayed with just the right amount of detail and personality.”
a book blog
on the narration
“her striding mastery of the free indirect mode.”
Helen Garner · Literary Hub, 2016
on the piano scene
“like when Darcy and Elizabeth share a look over the piano at Pemberley.”
five stars · a book blog

on the confined setting
“An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
Charlotte Brontë · letter to G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848
on the reading time
“it took me TWO MONTHS to read this damn book.”
a book blog
on the characters
“Remembering the characters alone is daunting. Remembering their interactions is almost impossible.”
a Substack review
on the prose style
“I’m not blown away by descriptions or the poetry of the language”
a book blog