About this title: It's hard to believe that Jane Austen wrote the sophisticated and acerbic PRIDE AND PREJUDICE when she was only 21 years old, in 1797. Originally entitled FIRST IMPRESSIONS, the novel was rejected, revised, retitled, and finally published--anonymously--in 1813, only four years before Austen's untimely death. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Austen calls on her sharp observations of vanity, venality, pomposity, and downright nuttiness in a story about a respectable but far from wealthy family full of daughters--girls who desperately need to find husbands if they are to have any kind of economic ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780140238211ISBN:0140238212
Description: Fair. Paperback, large format, a good reading copy. Your book will be securely packed and promptly dispatched from our UK warehouse. read more
"There are good reasons for this one being Austen's most famous and most popular, and probably the main one is Elizabeth Bennet, one of the most charming heroines of all time.
Lizzie's sense of humor - and sometimes her fierce loyalties - get in the way of a rigid observance of the finer points of the day's proprieties (which, for most of us, were a great deal too fine).
But she knows what's important, is concerned enough about appropriate behavior to help rescue her family's reputation, and suffers an agony of remorse when she finds that she has been unjust.
The language, of a kind little seen today, is lovely and funny - you'll find turns of phrase here that apply throughout your life.
There's a perfection in the unreeling of this story, delightful humor, satisfying outcomes, and useful life lessons. Read and reread it until you can consult it at will - it makes an exquisite piece of brain furniture.."
"I probably can't add anything to the hundreds of other reviews of this classic, so I'll tell a story about it instead.
When I was about 26, I decided to go back to school for my Master's (in Computer Science). As part of the application process, I had to take the GRE. One evening I was hanging out with my girlfriend and going through one of those vocabulary guides that list words you might see on standardized tests like the GRE. I was reading out to her the words I didn't know and was amazed at how many of them she recognized and defined accurately.
After a while she said, "What you need to do is read more nineteenth century literature like Dickens or Jane Austen. That's where all these words come from."
I had read Dickens in high school, but never Jane Austen.
"Jane Austen," I said. "What did she write?"
"Jane Austen... You know, Pride and Prejudice?"
"Oh, yeah. I've heard of that. Is it any good?"
"Is it any good? Do you mean you've never read Pride and Prejudice!??"
"Noooo..."
At this point my girlfriend went into a five minute long rant about how she couldn't believe she was dating somebody who was so illiterate that he had never read Pride and Prejudice, one of her favorite books of all time, and that I had to read it, and if I didn't like it I was a total loser.
So, to make a long story short, I read Pride and Prejudice, looking up all the words I didn't recognize. I loved it, my girlfriend married me (eventually), and three of the words I learned were on the GRE. So I guess I owe both my marriage and my graduate degrees to Jane Austen!"
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