Pride and Prejudice
-
-
4.8 • 20 Ratings
-
Publisher Description
An Apple Books Classic edition.
Jane Austen’s beloved classic opens with this witty and very memorable line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” With all the twists and turns of a soap opera, Pride and Prejudice chronicles the drama that ensues when the wealthy bachelor Mr. Darcy moves close to the Bennet family home in the English countryside. The news of his arrival sends the socially ambitious Mrs. Bennet-whose main concern is finding suitable matches for her five daughters-into overdrive.
The book’s main character, the high-spirited Elizabeth Bennet, is a strikingly modern heroine: a woman who refuses to lower her expectations or transform herself to suit society’s norms. Austen’s novel achieves a remarkable balance, serving up barbed criticism of the obsession with money, status, and matrimony even as it draws us into a swoon-worthy love story. At its heart, Pride and Prejudice is a romantic comedy, and a darned great one at that. It’s so much fun to turn the pages and wonder about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy: Will they or won’t they overcome their excessive pride and initial prejudices to make a happily-ever-after connection?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Collagist Fabe adds flair to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with 39 original illustrations that accompany the unabridged text. Fabe's collages overlay bright, watercolor-washed scenes with retro cut-paper figures and objects sampled from fashion magazines from the 1930s to the '50s. Accompanying each tableau is a quote from the Pride and Prejudice passage that inspired it. Like Austen's book, Fabe's work explores arcane customs of beauty and courtship, pageantry and social artifice: in one collage, a housewife holds a tray of drinks while a man sits happily with a sandwich in hand in the distance. While tinged with irony and more than a dash of social commentary, the collages nevertheless have a spirit of glee and evidence deep reverence for the novel. As Fabe describes in a preface, Austen "was a little bit mean the way real people are mean so there are both heroes and nincompoops. Family is both beloved and annoying. That is Austen's genius, her ability to describe people in all their frailty and humor." This is a sweet and visually appealing homage. (BookLife)
