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- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pride and Prejudice
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Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Release date: June 1, 1998 [eBook #1342]
Most recently updated: September 22, 2025
Language: English
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ***
[Illustration:
GEORGE ALLEN
PUBLISHER
156 CHARING CROSS ROAD
LONDON
RUSKIN HOUSE
]
[Illustration:
_Reading Jane’s Letters._ _Chap 34._
]
PRIDE.
and
PREJUDICE
by
Jane Austen,
with a Preface by
George Saintsbury
and
Illustrations by
Hugh Thomson
[Illustration: 1894]
Ruskin 156. Charing
House. Cross Road.
London
George Allen.
CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
[Illustration:
_To J. Comyns Carr
in acknowledgment of all I
owe to his friendship and
advice, these illustrations are
gratefully inscribed_
_Hugh Thomson_
]
PREFACE.
[Illustration]
_Walt Whitman has somewhere a fine and just distinction between “loving
by allowance” and “loving with personal love.” This distinction applies
to books as well as to men and women; and in the case of the not very
numerous authors who are the objects of the personal affection, it
brings a curious consequence with it. There is much more difference as
to their best work than in the case of those others who are loved “by
allowance” by convention, and because it is felt to be the right and
proper thing to love them. And in the sect--fairly large and yet
unusually choice--of Austenians or Janites, there would probably be
found partisans of the claim to primacy of almost every one of the
novels. To some the delightful freshness and humour of_ Northanger
Abbey, _its completeness, finish, and_ entrain, _obscure the undoubted
critical facts that its scale is small, and its scheme, after all, that
of burlesque or parody, a kind in which the first rank is reached with
difficulty._ Persuasion, _relatively faint in tone, and not enthralling
in interest, has devotees who exalt above all the others its exquisite
delicacy and keeping. The catastrophe of_ Mansfield Park _is admittedly
theatrical, the hero and heroine are insipid, and the author has almost
wickedly destroyed all romantic interest by expressly admitting that
Edmund only took Fanny because Mary shocked him, and that Fanny might
very likely have taken Crawford if he had been a little more assiduous;
yet the matchless rehearsal-scenes and the characters of Mrs. Norris and
others have secured, I believe, a considerable party for it._ Sense and
Sensibility _has perhaps the fewest out-and-out admirers; but it does
not want them._
_I suppose, however, that the majority of at least competent votes
would, all things considered, be divided between_ Emma _and the present
book; and perhaps the vulgar verdict (if indeed a fondness for Miss
Austen be not of itself a patent of exemption from any possible charge
of vulgarity) would go for_ Emma. _It is the larger, the more varied, the
more popular; the author had by the time of its composition seen rather
more of the world, and had improved her general, though not her most
peculiar and characteristic dialogue; such figures as Miss Bates, as the
Eltons, cannot but unite the suffrages of everybody. On the other hand,
I, for my part, declare for_ Pride and Prejudice _unhesitatingly. It
seems to me the most perfect, the most characteristic, the most
eminently quintessential of its author’s works; and for this contention
in such narrow space as is permitted to me, I propose here to show
cause._
_In the first place, the book (it may be barely necessary to remind the
reader) was in its first shape written very early, somewhere about 1796,
when Miss Austen was barely twenty-one; though it was revised and
finished at Chawton some fifteen years later, and was not published till
1813, only four years before her death. I do not know whether, in this
combination of the fresh and vigorous projection of youth, and the
critical revision of middle life, there may be traced the distinct
superiority in point of construction, which, as it seems to me, it
possesses over all the others. The plot, though not elaborate, is almost
regular enough for Fielding; hardly a character, hardly an incident
could be retrenched without loss to the story. The elopement of Lydia
and Wickham is not, like that of Crawford and Mrs. Rushworth, a_ coup de
théâtre; _it connects itself in the strictest way with the course of the
story earlier, and brings about the denouement with complete propriety.
All the minor passages--the loves of Jane and Bingley, the advent of Mr.
Collins, the visit to Hunsford, the Derbyshire tour--fit in after the
same unostentatious, but masterly fashion. There is no attempt at the
hide-and-seek, in-and-out business, which in the transactions between
Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax contributes no doubt a good deal to the
intrigue of_ Emma, _but contributes it in a fashion which I do not think
the best feature of that otherwise admirable book. Although Miss Austen
always liked something of the misunderstanding kind, which afforded her
opportunities for the display of the peculiar and incomparable talent to
be noticed presently, she has been satisfied here with the perfectly
natural occasions provided by the false account of Darcy’s conduct given
by Wickham, and by the awkwardness (arising with equal naturalness) from
the gradual transformation of Elizabeth’s own feelings from positive
aversion to actual love. I do not know whether the all-grasping hand of
the playwright has ever been laid upon_ Pride and Prejudice; _and I dare
say that, if it were, the situations would prove not startling or
garish enough for the footlights, the character-scheme too subtle and
delicate for pit and gallery. But if the attempt were made, it would
certainly not be hampered by any of those loosenesses of construction,
which, sometimes disguised by the conveniences of which the novelist can
avail himself, appear at once on the stage._
_I think, however, though the thought will doubtless seem heretical to
more than one school of critics, that construction is not the highest
merit, the choicest gift, of the novelist.