Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780435160418
ISBN number: 0435160419
Label: Heinemann
Manufacturer: Heinemann
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 404
Printing Date: 1986-02
Publishing house: Heinemann
Studio: Heinemann
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
It's time to rediscover the wonderful books we all cherish.
Originally published anonymously in 1813, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is one of the most widely read and most popular novels in the English language. The courtship between the independent Elisabeth Bennett and the handsome yet arrogant Mr. Darcy illuminates the page in this wonderful novel of comedy and manners.
Amazon.com Review:
'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'
Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, 'Call me Ishmael,' the very first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.
Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she very first began to love him: 'It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my very first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.' She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet 'as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print'. Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
After seeing a number of adaptations, I finally decided to read all of
Austen's novels. Northanger Abbey was not bad, and Sense and Sensibility
is excellent. However, this is the best so far. While there is a lot of
insightful comment on the custom of English society of the time, and
discusion of the character's motivation, the book just sparkles during
the interchanges between them. While those between Elizabeth
and Mr. Darcy are justifiably famous, I would say that many of the others
are at the same level. My favorite are perhaps the interchanges between
Lady Catherine and Elizabeth. I am very much looking forward to reading
the remaining three completed novels.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is a terrible novel. I was expecting a "classic" when I read this and the only reason that I can think of for this book to be considered a classic is because it was written by a woman at a time when women were repressed in society. The plot is shallow. It is simply a love story with a few hints of irony thrown in. The characters are very unlikable. In fact, I hate the characters because they are shallow and self-centered. Also, Austen clearly never learned that readers do not like run-on sentences because the so called "novel", consists of run-on sentences that sometimes consist of more than one page. Austen also describes everything way too much, when one sentence is clearly enough. This novel is complete trash, and I really regret having to read it for my literature class. I could have simply read the celebrity tabloids, and I would have been exposed to as informative and moving of a story as this piece of trash.
Rated by buyers -
Jane Austen is an amazing author! I loved this book. I got a little frustrated with it sometimes, but I'm very glad I decided to keep reading it. Pride and Prejudice will always be a clasic. I plan on reading the rest of Jane Austen's books also. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a timeless and beloved classic. It's a beautiful story of class in Jane Austen's time that appeals to us yesterday because it is so well-wrtitten. It's scrupulously clean morally, and I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates the time when love stories were wholesome and pure and touching. All the characters have an appeal that's makes you appreciate the way they fit into the story.
Rated by buyers -
Kindle owners hopefully are aware of the wealth of free editions of the classics which are available through Feedbooks and other sources.
I obtained a copy of P&P from feedbooks originally and while it was easy to get and the price was right, the overall quality of the text is not great. I've found several typos, presumably the result of OCR errors and it's somewhat distracting.
Since P&P is one of my wife's favorite books, I was delighted to see
Penguin had released an electronic edition for $0.50 complete with the usual footnotes, essays and maps that one's used to
finding in textbook editions of the classics.
The table of contents is pretty minimal. The headings include the editor's material, and the three volume headings.
Find other books like this one:
