Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by the English writer Jane Austen, first published in three volumes in London in January 1813, about Elizabeth Bennet, one of five daughters of a country gentleman, and her misjudgement of, quarrel with and eventual marriage to the wealthy Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Composition

Austen (born 16 December 1775, died 18 July 1817) wrote the first version under the title First Impressions. A family chronology published in 1913 by her relatives William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh records it as begun in October 1796 and ended in August 1797, when she was in her early twenties.

Her father, the Reverend George Austen, offered it to the London publisher Thomas Cadell. His letter, dated 1 November 1797, describes "a manuscript novel, comprising 3 vols., about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina," and asks what it would cost to publish "at the author's risk." The family account says the proposal was declined by return of post; the Jane Austen Society of North America likewise reports that it was rejected "by return mail".

Austen returned to the manuscript after the publication of her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, in October 1811. According to the Jane Austen Society of North America, she revised it substantially in 1811–1812 and changed the title, which avoided duplicating the title of another book published in 1800. In a letter to her sister Cassandra written the day after she received her copy, she said she had "lop't and crop't so successfully" that the book must be shorter than Sense and Sensibility. The 1913 family record notes that the revision of her early works was so complete that the earlier and later writing can no longer be told apart.

Publication

The publisher Thomas Egerton bought the copyright outright. Austen wrote in a letter of 1813 that she had "written myself into £250," and the editors of the family record explain that this implies Egerton paid £110 for Pride and Prejudice. Egerton bore the costs of printing and advertising and kept the profits.

The novel was advertised in the Morning Chronicle on 28 January 1813 as a three-volume set priced at 18 shillings. It did not carry her name: the title page credited it to "the Author of Sense and Sensibility". Writing to Cassandra from Chawton on 29 January 1813, Austen reported, "I have got my own darling child from London," and noted that the advertisement was "in our paper to-day for the first time: 18*s*." The first edition sold out in under a year; a second edition followed in the autumn of 1813 and a third in 1817.

Plot

The novel opens: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Mr and Mrs Bennet live at Longbourn, in Hertfordshire, with their five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia. Mr Bennet's property is an estate of two thousand a year, entailed "in default of heirs male, on a distant relation", so it will pass out of the family on his death. An entail was a legal arrangement fixing the line of inheritance of a property; here it means the daughters must, in practice, secure their futures through marriage. The heir is a clergyman cousin, Mr Collins, who, as Mr Bennet puts it, "when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house".

The plot begins when the nearby house of Netherfield is let to Mr Bingley, a young man of "large fortune from the north of England". At a public assembly in the nearby town of Meryton, Bingley is drawn to Jane, while his friend Darcy, reported to have ten thousand a year, declines to dance with Elizabeth and is overheard calling Elizabeth "tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me". Elizabeth's dislike of him is confirmed when George Wickham, a charming officer in the militia regiment stationed at Meryton, tells her that Darcy cheated him of a living (a church post with an income) promised by Darcy's father.

Mr Collins proposes to Elizabeth; she refuses him, and soon afterwards he is accepted by her friend Charlotte Lucas, who, the narrator says, took him "solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment". Bingley leaves Netherfield abruptly, and Jane is left heartbroken.

While visiting Charlotte at Hunsford, near Rosings, the estate of Darcy's aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Elizabeth receives a proposal from Darcy that begins "In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed." She refuses him angrily, accusing him of separating Bingley from Jane and of wronging Wickham. Darcy answers in a letter, explaining his part in Bingley's departure and setting out Wickham's history, including an attempted elopement with Darcy's young sister. Reading it, Elizabeth realises that she has misjudged both men: "Till this moment, I never knew myself."

On a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, Mr and Mrs Gardiner, Elizabeth visits Darcy's estate, Pemberley, and finds him changed in manner. The visit is cut short by news that Lydia has run off with Wickham, a disgrace that threatens the whole family. Elizabeth later learns from Mrs Gardiner's letter that Darcy found the couple and arranged their marriage at his own expense: Wickham's debts, "considerably more than a thousand pounds," were paid, another thousand was settled on Lydia, and his commission was purchased.

Bingley returns to Netherfield and becomes engaged to Jane. Lady Catherine, who intends Darcy for her own daughter, comes to Longbourn to demand that Elizabeth promise never to accept him ("Miss Bennet, do you know who I am?"); Elizabeth refuses to give any such promise. Her refusal encourages Darcy to propose again, and this time she accepts.

Themes

The title names the faults on which the story turns: Darcy's pride in his rank, and Elizabeth's quick prejudice against him, formed at their first meeting and confirmed by Wickham's story. Both are corrected over the course of the book. The original title, First Impressions, pointed to the same concern with how judgements are formed and revised.

Money and marriage are treated with precision. The novel states incomes in exact figures (Bingley's "four or five thousand a year", Darcy's ten thousand, Mr Bennet's two thousand), and the entail on Longbourn makes clear why marriage was the main route to security for women of the Bennets' class. Charlotte Lucas's marriage to Mr Collins, entered into for an "establishment" rather than for affection, stands as a contrast to Elizabeth's refusal of the same man.

Austen herself remarked on the book's tone. In a letter to Cassandra of 4 February 1813, she wrote that "the work is rather too light and bright and sparkling: it wants shade," and joked that it might be improved with "a long chapter of sense" or "solemn specious nonsense" unconnected with the story. In the earlier letter she said of her heroine, "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print."

Reception

Contemporary reviews were favourable. The Critical Review, as quoted by the Jane Austen Society of North America, found it "very superior to any novel we have lately met with in the delineation of domestic scenes."

Later writers were divided. Walter Scott recorded in his journal on 14 March 1826 that he had read Pride and Prejudice "for the third time at least," and praised Austen's "talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." He contrasted it with his own work: "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... is denied to me."

Charlotte Brontë took the opposite view. In a letter of 12 January 1848 to the critic G. H. Lewes, printed in Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), she said she had not read the novel until Lewes recommended it, and described what she found as "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."

Texts

The novel has long been out of copyright. A full text, from the 1894 edition illustrated by Hugh Thomson with a preface by George Saintsbury, is available from Project Gutenberg and in [Micwyn's Library](/read/1342).

Sources

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, edition with a preface by George Saintsbury and illustrations by Hugh Thomson (London: George Allen, 1894), Project Gutenberg eBook #1342. gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342
• Jane Austen, The Letters of Jane Austen, selected from the compilation of Edward, Lord Brabourne, Project Gutenberg eBook #42078 (letters of 29 January and 4 February 1813). gutenberg.org/ebooks/42078
• William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record (1913), Project Gutenberg eBook #22536. gutenberg.org/ebooks/22536
• Jane Austen Society of North America, "Pride and Prejudice" (read November 2026). jasna.org/austen/works/pride-prejudice/
• Walter Scott, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, from the original manuscript at Abbotsford, Project Gutenberg eBook #14860 (entry of 14 March 1826). gutenberg.org/ebooks/14860
• Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 2 (1857), Project Gutenberg eBook #1700 (letter of 12 January 1848). gutenberg.org/ebooks/1700