Pride and Prejudice, originally published in 1813, started life as First Impressions.

The first
draft was written by Jane Austen, aged twenty (the same age as Elizabeth Bennet), over a ten
month period, beginning in October 1796 and ending in August 1797. Jane Austen’s family
and particularly her father, George, were very pleased with it and it became a family
favourite. George Austen, who was encouraging of his daughter’s writing, offered the
manuscript to the publisher, Cadell, unbeknownst to Jane, and enquired into the expense of
publishing it at the author’s own risk. Making one of the biggest mistakes in publishing
history, Cadell rejected the manuscript. First Impressions underwent a number of revisions
over the coming years, including of course its change of title to Pride and Prejudice. Jane is
known to have ‘lop’t and crop’t’ the manuscript in 1811 after the publication of Sense and
Sensibility, and the copyright was finally sold to Thomas Edgerton of the military library in
Whitehall for £110. Almost sixteen years after the first draft was written, Pride and Prejudice
was published as a novel in three volumes ‘by the author of Sense and Sensibility’ in late
January 1913.
Jane Austen loving referred to it as ‘my own darling child’ but famously worried about it
being ‘rather too light & bright & sparkling.’ It is, however, the novel’s bright and sparkling
wit that has captured readers’ hearts over the years. Pride and Prejudice has been the most
adapted for television and film of all of Jane Austen’s novels.In a 2003 British poll, it was
also voted the best-loved novel by a female author.
Pride and Prejudice, (Begun 1796 in Steventon Rectory)
Jane Austen's most famous novel was written between October 1796 - August 1797 as a thick
3-volume tome known as First impressions. The manuscript was immensely popular among
Jane's family and friends, prompting Jane's father, Rev. George Austen, to write a letter in
1797 to Thomas Cadell, a publisher in London, to inquire if he would be willing to publish it.
Cadell declined the letter by 'return of post.' The family continued to enjoy reading Jane's
novel throughout the years.
In 1812, Jane revised the book, now named Pride and Prejudice, and reduced its length
considerably. Thomas Edgerton published the novel in three volumes in January 1813. He
purchased the copyright of the book outright for £110, which meant that Jane made no profit
off the second edition, published in 1813.

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There are many reasons why we can’t stop

reading Jane Austen
Rosemary Goring 7 Jun 2010
Rosemary Goring reckons some devotees of the writer go too far.
If ever there was a good reason for turning again to Jane Austen’s work, it’s the recently reissued
novel by Maria Edgeworth, first published in 1834 (see review on page 10). When placed alongside
her far more fashionable and illustrious peer, the merits of Austen are thrown into particularly sharp
relief. Edgeworth’s fiction may have been the bestselling work of her era, making her the richest
novelist alive, but where she thumps the table and cranks up the melodrama, Austen quietly rips the
rug from
under her characters and her readers, puncturing drama at every turn with her devastatingly
understated style. Not only does she rarely moralise, but she has been accused of amorality, a tribute
indeed to a parson’s daughter who lived the most sober life imaginable.
Of course, no-one needs an excuse to go back to Austen. I’m sure that many readers of this column,
like me, turn often to her novels for pleasure, amusement, comfort, or simply to marvel once more at
what she achieved with so little apparent effort. As the plethora of TV adaptations, films, such as
Becoming Jane, pictured below, and books exploring Austen and her characters shows, this barbed
observer continues to attract devotees in numbers more usually associated with platinum albums than
literary fiction.
One more bouquet has just been laid at Ms Austen’s feet. A Truth Universally Acknowledged, edited
by Susannah Carson (Particular Books, £20), is a rag-bag of essays written by the famous – JB
Priestley, Virginia Woolf, CS Lewis, Kingsley Amis and fils – and the less famous but no less
devoted or shrewd. Interesting but uneven, this smorgasbord is subtitled 33 Reasons Why We Can’t
Stop Reading Jane Austen. Why only 33, you ask? Good question. If I started to list them now, this
column would run through to the back page.
However, before anyone thinks I’m turning into one of those Janeites Kipling referred to – the sort of
reader who calls the author Jane, goes into raptures about her novels and cannot tolerate a word of
criticism about her – I have to thank inimitable American critic, Lionel Trilling for his essay.
As you’d expect with Trilling, there’s not an iota of cant about his outlook. Dispassionately, he
observes that there is a repellent aspect to much of the approbation surrounding Austen: “One may
refuse to like almost any author and incur no other blame from his admirers than that of being wanting
in taste in that one respect. But not to like Jane Austen is to put oneself under suspicion of a general
personal inadequacy and even – let us face it – of a want of breeding.”
One late convert was, we’re told, “able to be at ease with [Austen’s novels] only when he discovered
that they were charged with scorn of the very people who set the common tone of admiration”.
Perverse and superior as that sounds, I can sympathise. There is something cloying about the
sentimentality that surrounds conversations about Austen. Some of her wiser readers are well aware of
this.
As EM Forster ruefully remarked, “I am a Jane Austenite and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane
Austen.” He and a million others.
For a writer who drew much of her gift from a cold heart and alarming acerbity, her devotees’
admiration is not only mawkish but missplaced. By all means revel in Austen for her literary
excellence, but please release the author herself from being pawed and drooled over like a puppy, and
claimed as queen of the book group brigade as if she were the kind of benign friend who’d suffer
watching an iPod’s worth of baby photos without a murmur of complaint. Metaphorically speaking,
Austen is more likely to turn up at the door bearing prickly pears than cupcakes. Yet, despite an army
of pious protectors, you still cannot deny her brilliance or cease to enjoy her work. You could say
that’s the truest test and surest measure of her talent. http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/book-
features/there-are-many-reasons-why-we-can-t-stop-reading-jane-austen-1.1033344
Jane Austen - Our Prose Shakespeare
Posterity's evaluation of Jane Austen's novels created 1811-1s817, has been
described by her contemporary, Sir Walter Scott as the 'Prose Shakespeare'

Jane Austen (1775-1817) has been called by literary scholars ‘our prose Shakespeare." Her
contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, one of the age’s greatest writers, once lamented that her
‘exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting,
from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.’ Today, Jane is regarded
as one of the greatest novelists of all time; some critics have even claimed she is the first
great novelist.
There are numerous Jane Austen Societies around the world. The Regency Period of Jane's
novels (1811-1820) has become the preferred setting for countless historical romances. Jane
was remarkably modest. Her name never appeared on the title page of her books in her
lifetime. Despite her humility, her work has become the ideal example of the maxim that a
novelist should write about what they know best; that commonplace, everyday experience
can be the source of great and enduring art.
"I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed
female whoever dared to be an authoress" (Jane Austen – In a letter to Reverend James
Clarke, 1815).
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We know that Jane was the youngest of eight children of George Austen, the rector of
Steventon in Hampshire, England and Cassandra Leigh Austen. Ironically, Jane’s father, who
privately tutored sons of the gentry to prepare them for Oxford and Cambridge, felt unable to
teach his daughters. Nevertheless he encouraged their education. Jane and her old sister,
Cassandra, were educated privately at schools in Oxford, Southampton and Reading. Jane
and Cassandra grew up well read in the English classics, prose and poetry and was reasonably
well-versed in languages, music and art. She began writing during her early teenage years,
composing plays and stories which she read aloud to amuse her family.
The Austens Move to Bath
In 1801, George Austen, accompanied by his family, retired to Bath. After his death in 1805,
the family moved to Southampton to live nearer to the two youngest of the six Austen sons,
who were in the Navy. The Austens returned to Hampshire in 1809 settling in a comfortable
cottage in the village of Chawton, where Jane remained until her death from Addison’s
disease, at the age of 42.
Spinsterhood
Because Jane never married, the tendency is to see her as a wise, spinster aunt, writing
exclusively about courtship and marriage matters outside her own experience. However, she
was certainly not a recluse. There had been at least one marriage proposal and one woman
who knew Jane in her early years commented: "she was the prettiest, silliest, most affected,
husband-hunting butterfly ever remembered." Shunning marriage, Austin involved herself
instead with her wide circle of friends and relatives while lending a handin running the family
household.
Read on
• Novels Inspired by Jane Austen
• Travels with Jane Austen
• Jane Austen's Posthumous Books
Jane’s writing career is divided in two periods: her earliest work, written in Steventon, then a
12-year lull, followed by the relocation to Chawton to Chawton, where her early novels
(Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey) were reworked and her
later novels (Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion) were written.
Although 200 years have passed, Jane Austen’s perceptiveness has never become dated;
women readers continue to identify with her heroines, and both men and women claim her as
a favourite novelist. Her timeless capacity to delight readers was praised by Somerset
Maugham, who said of her: "Nothing very much happens in her books, and yet, when you
come to the bottom of the page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will happen next. The
novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess."

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