10 Surprising Facts About Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
By: By Joy Lanzendorfer
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
10 Surprising Facts About Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
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It’s a simple story: boy is rude to girl, girl dislikes boy. Boy proposes to girl and she refuses him. Later, she discovers that he’s stinking rich. Hijinks ensue. In the end, they are married in an ideal 19 th -century wedding of both love and money. Today, more than 200 years later, Pride and Prejudice remains Jane Austen’s most beloved novel.
1. Like her characters, Jane Austen was rejected for not being rich enough.
Pride and Prejudice is about young women of genteel poverty trying to find good marriage matches. This issue must have been fresh on the young author’s mind when she wrote the book. At age 20, she had a flirtation with a young man named Tom Lefroy . Like a scene out of one of her novels, she flirted scandalously with him at a ball. “Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together,” she wrote to her sister Cassandra. “He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you.” But Austen’s social status wasn’t high enough and Lefroy’s family separated the two lovebirds. Lefroy was soon engaged to a woman with a large fortune. Austen wrote her sister: “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy … My tears flow as I write this, at this melancholy idea."
2. Mr. Darcy would be the equivalent of a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt.
The characters in Pride and Prejudice constantly exclaim over Mr. Darcy’s 10,000 pounds a year, but how rich is that exactly? In 2013, The Telegraph calculated that adjusting for financial changes, a decent estimate might be 12 million pounds, or $18.7 million U.S. dollars a year. And that’s just interest on top of a much larger fortune. It’s no wonder Mrs. Bennet gushed about Elizabeth’s engagement—"How rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have!" Marrying Darcy would be like marrying a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt.
3. Lydia Bennet elopes to the Las Vegas of her day.
In the book, the Bennet family is almost ruined when Lydia elopes with the nefarious soldier George Wickham to Scotland. “I am going to Gretna Green,” Lydia writes to her friend, “and if you cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton.” Unlike England, Scotland allowed people under 21 to get married without parental consent, and without the same legal and religious bureaucracy. Gretna Green was the first town over the Scottish border. There, a young couple could be joined with “marriage by declaration,” which often occurred in a blacksmith shop.
4. Like Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Jane Austen was close to her sister.
In Pride and Prejudice , the relationship between the two sisters is central to the novel. In real life, Jane was very close to her sister Cassandra. They wrote each other almost every day when they were apart and would voluntarily share a bedroom, even when they could sleep separately. When Jane died, Cassandra wrote her niece: “She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow.” It’s no wonder that close sisters appear in so many of Austen’s novels.
5. One publisher rejected Pride and Prejudice without even reading it.
Austen finished the book, then titled First Impressions , when she was 21 years old. In 1797, her father sent it to the publisher Thomas Cadell, writing that he had "a Manuscript Novel comprised in three Vols., about the length of Miss [Fanny] Burney's Evelina ." He asked how much it would cost him to publish the book and what Cadell would pay for copyright. In response, Cadell scrawled “Declined by Return of Post” on the letter and sent it back with insulting speed. The novel languished for 14 years until, flush with the success of Sense and Sensibility , Austen revised the manuscript. It was published in 1813 when she was 37 years old.
6. The book's title came from a Fanny Burney novel.
Austen probably got the title Pride and Prejudice from Cecilia by Fanny Burney, where the phrase is repeated several times—and in block capitals, no less. “The whole of this unfortunate business,” said Dr. Lyster, “has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. … If to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.”
7. Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously.
Austen didn’t put her name on her novels, and would only say they were “By a Lady.” The title page of Pride and Prejudice said, “by the author of Sense and Sensibility .” It wasn’t until after her death that her brother revealed her name to the public.
8. Jane Austen that worried Pride and Prejudice was too frivolous.
Because Pride and Prejudice humorously deals with women getting married, it’s often described as “chick lit,” a label some fans find reductionist. But Austen herself worried the book wasn’t serious enough. “The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling,” she wrote. “It wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had.” Overall, though, Austen was “well satisfied enough” with the novel, especially with the character of Elizabeth. In another letter, she said, “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know.”
9. Jane Austen sold her copyright to Pride and Prejudice for 110 pounds—but wanted 150.
Austen sold the copyright for Pride and Prejudice to her publishers for 110 pounds, even though she said in a letter that she wanted 150 pounds. She chose this one-time payment, forfeiting any risk or reward connected to the future of the book. It was a bad gamble" The book was a bestseller, and was on its third printing by 1817. It has been in print ever since.
10. Pride and Prejudice has been adapted hundreds of times.
The adaptations of Pride and Prejudice seem endless (and sometimes bizarre ). There have been at least 11 film and TV versions of the book, including the 1995 BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth as a memorable Darcy. Other (looser) adaptations include Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) , Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), the Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice (2004), the mystery novel Death Comes to Pemberley , and the 2012-2013 web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries .
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January 28 2024 is the 211th anniversary of the publishing of Pride and Prejudice.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but using the calculation in Paragraph 2 above, Jane Austen's sale of the copyright 211 years ago for 110 pounds would be the same as 122,000 pounds today - still only a fraction of what that copyright would actually be worth.
LOL. Well, posting THIS was a waste of my time. I guess that for topics like this I should seek out a social internet site that is somewhat more academically literate.
I've never read a Jane Austen book in my life, although I have seen one of the versions of Emma and the movie Clueless , which was based on Emma.
I have read some Dickens and Mark Twain.
I think in order to find multiple people interested in discussing Jane Austen you would have to be on a much larger forum.
A lot of articles here dont get many comments and I have had a bunch of them.
You never watched one of the movie versions of Pride and Prejudice? I guess chacun as son gout, i.e. different strokes for different folks as the old adage says. When I was in high school our English teacher required us to read and submit a book report on Pride and Prejudice, which was the bait that hooked me into majoring in English Literature for my first Bachelor's degree. That not only prepared me well for my profession, but to be a teacher of English as well. And now that I have done a far far better thing than I have ever done, I'm having a far far better rest than I have ever known. Since you've read Dickens - which of his novels does that come from?
a tale of two cities and i didnt have to look it up
Good for you. Now read Pride and Prejudice, or at least watch the Colin Firth or Keira Knightly version of it.
Not the Keira Knightley version!
LOL. Well, it's probably the most popular, but of course the Colin Firth BBC miniseries was the most accurate to the text, probably the best adaptation. I have the CDs and have watched it many times. The Keira Knightly one has been played on the TV channels here once in a while.
When it came to the many many adaptations I have to admit that I enjoyed watching Bride and Prejudice. I really couldn't stand Bridget Jones Diary and turned it off not long after it started.
The Firth/Ehle version is the best by far, IMO.
The Knightly version takes too many liberties and was poorly researched. I know they didn't have as much screen time to develop the story, but they didn't have to make the Bennets live in squalor, nor act like Darcy was royalty, with everybody bowing and scraping.
And Bingley was too damn irritating to be at all attractive. Jane deserved better.
I'll admit I did prefer Brenda Blethyn's Mrs. Bennet to Alison Steadman's.
I loved Bridget Jones, but as usual, the books are better than the movies.
I'll try watching Bridget Jones again, but I have to get past the part where she gets so jiggly. As for Darcy being treated like royalty, remember that in the original novel, after Mrs. Bennet heard that Lizzie was engaged to him, she all of a sudden described him as someone great, so rich, even said he was like a lord.
Her struggles with her weight are a big part of the story, in both the books and the movies.
By "jiggly" I meant her speech.
Oh, I misunderstood about "jiggly".
As far as Darcy being treated like royalty, I was referring more to the entire assembly at Meryton bowing to him and the Bingleys when they entered the ballroom, while the three of them (the screenwriter killed off the Hursts) stood there not bowing in return, as if they were entitled to such deference. They weren't that much above their company, as Lizzie points out to Lady Catherine. Darcy was a gentleman, and she a gentleman's daughter. The Bingley's fortune came from trade, and they did not own a landed estate, so the Bennets, despite having less money, were of higher social rank, Caroline Bingley's snobbishness notwithstanding. The bows would have been reciprocal.
I'm sure Joe Wright did it to make it seem like more of a rags-to-riches story, for appeal to an audience looking for that. But despite the differences in their fortunes, Elizabeth Bennet didn't come from a poor family. She was destined to poverty if she didn't marry well, but she didn't come from poverty.
Yes, the way the assembly stopped dancing and stood when the Darcy/Bingley group entered the room appeared almost unnatural, but they were strangers whose coming to Meryton was so highly anticipated, besides the fact that the majority were obviously relatively unsophisticated, and the fact that Bingley had rented the most grand mansion in the area did whet the curiosity of the populace.
The Hursts were relatively meaningless in the novel so leaving them off was no detriment.
As for the financial status of the Bennets, they did have servants, and in the 2005 version at least Mrs. Bennet does tell Mr. Collins that they can afford a cook, so they were not in any version that I can recall impoverished. The biggest concern was if Mr. Bennet should die and Mr. Collins, who would inherit their home, would turn the survivors out..
In Becoming Jane the possibility of poverty is made considerably clearer, and one of the aims of a marriage was to assure that it would be for fortune, or at least comfortable security. Remember that in that movie Mrs. Bennet made a big thing about having to personally dig up her potatoes.
Okay, I just watched Bridget Jones's Diary right through. IMO it is one hell of a stretch to consider it an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The closest thing to do it is Colin Firth being named in the movie as Mr. Darcy. Any incidents are tenuous at best. Yes, Bridget is infatuated with another, who is a scoundrel, and does not determine until the end that the man she disliked was the right one. I'm sure there are more than one movie with that theme that do not pretend to be the imitation of a classic novel.
It's also Mark Darcy's initial disdain of Bridget, Bridget's embarrassing mother scheming at getting her married to the rich Mark Darcy, Natasha, the thinner, classier woman setting her cap at Mark...
Although Darcy in the novel had disdain for the Bennets, he did except Jane and Lizzie from that.
He said Lizzy wasn't handsome enough to tempt him, and that Jane smiled too much. But generally, yes, he was fair to them.
Right. And Lizzie heard him say it.
Jane Austen fans are a pretty niche group, Buzz. And I participate in several Austen pages on Facebook, so I guess what I have to say, I've likely already said elsewhere.
I sadly have to agree with you.