A Novel in Three Volumes by the Author of "Sense and Sensibility"
First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has consistently been Jane Austen's most popular novel. It portrays life in the genteel rural society of the day, and tells of the initial misunderstandings and later mutual enlightenment between Elizabeth Bennet (whose liveliness and quick wit have often attracted readers) and the haughty Darcy. The title Pride and Prejudice refers (among other things) to the ways in which Elizabeth and Darcy first view each other. The original version of the novel was written in 1796-1797 under the title First Impressions, and was probably in the form of an exchange of letters. Jane Austen's own tongue-in-cheek opinion of her work, in a letter to her sister Cassandra immediately after its publication, was: "Upon the whole... I am well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants [i.e. needs] shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story: an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparté, or anything that would form a contrast and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and general epigrammatism of the general style". Jump to the Pride and Prejudice table of contents. Document structure:This Pride and Prejudice e-text is fairly thoroughly hypertexted, but there are no cross references from one part of the main body of the text to another part. Instead, links go into or out of the main text, either to or from one of five indexes: The list of characters, the list of events in chronological order, the comments on random topics, the index to the motifs of "pride" and "prejudice", or the list of important places (with a map). It has been pointed out that since Chapter 1 is marked up pretty much the same way as any other chapter, those who have never read Pride and Prejudice before may find a confusing plethora of links in the first few chapters -- don't feel you have to click on everything. How to use this DocumentIf you have a graphics browser, then you will see little mini-icons preceding links in some menus in the Pride and Prejudice hypertext (and elsewhere in the Jane Austen pages):
One practical point is that when web browsers follow a link, they tend to put the text referenced by the link at the extreme top of the screen or window, which can be a little awkward for a document which includes many links which go to the middle of a paragraph, as this one does. When you have followed a link, and the promised topic of the link doesn't seem to immediately leap into prominence, look near or at the top of the window, and then scroll back a few lines if necessary to get the immediate context of the reference. On the other hand, when there is a reference to a location near the end of an HTML file, some browsers (including the most frequently used graphic browsers!) will put the end of the file at the bottom of the window, with no indication of where in the window the target location is. (Complain to the software companies about these annoying browser peculiarities.) Pride and Prejudice Shorter Table of Contents
Longer Table of ContentsRoman-numeral chapter numbers are relative to each volume, while parenthesized chapter numbers are continuous throughout the whole work.
|
The links in this index lead to passages referring to the themes of Pride and Prejudice. The origin of the phrase "Pride and Prejudice" is the fifth volume of Fanny Burney's 1782 novel Cecilia, as discussed in an appendix to R.W. Chapman's 1923 edition of Pride and Prejudice.
This is a hyper-text markup of the Plain ASCII e-text of Pride and Prejudice available in compressed binary .zip format on this server <260577 bytes> [see explanation of ".zip" here]. That was corrected against the 1923 R.W. Chapman edition, with slight punctuation modernization, by H. Churchyard (some spelling inconsistencies and archaisms were retained from the first editions).
Go to the start of this document.
Go to the Pride and Prejudice table of contents.
Go to Jane Austen's writings
Go to Jane Austen's life
Go to Jane Austen's art
Go to Jane Austen bibliography
Go
to Jane Austen info page table of contents.