Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28, 1813 and this bicentenary year has gotten off to a rousing start with an abundance of news articles, blog commentaries, facebook and twitter babblings, and promises of a year filled with festivals, conferences and much more of the above.
Pride & Prejudice 1st edition, 1813
As booksellers our interest is in the printed word and the physical book – I append here with a link to the complete article one of the better photo-essays on the Pride and Prejudice phenomena over the past 200 years, as seen through the various book cover designs, and a great start to collecting – one title, many covers, here just a small sampling of the possibilities: [this article was posted on Atlantic Wire on January 25, 2013]
“Monday marks the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice — fun fact: the book’s original title was the questionably Skinemax-sounding First Impressions — and the publishing world is awash in versions of the Jane Austen classic with which you might celebrate the monumental event. After all, Austen’s work has been in the public domain for nearly a century. How do you prefer your Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet star-crossed romance? Here’s a selection of covers from years past up through the present; the good, the bad, the jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and a few that pale in comparison to the book’s contents. First impressions are important! Jane Austen memory lane, let’s take a walk down you …”
A Sangorski & Sutcliffe binding - on Abeooks for $8,303
Vintage Classics, c2000
[Images from Atlantic Wire]
Further reading:
- Another photo essay on Slate.com
- A Quiz to test your knowledge of Pride and Prejudice at the Telegraph.com
- William Deresiewicz on P&P‘s 200th birthday at The New Yorker.com
- There is even a devoted website to P&P200 - so you can keep current all the year long
- I did a post on my Jane Austen in Vermont blog asking for “first impressions” on first reading Pride and Prejudice – the surest proof of its endurance through the years; and here is a post on Jane Austen’s own comments about her “own darling Child.”
And this is just a smattering of all the chatter on Pride and Prejudice this past week – whatever would Jane Austen have to say about all this! [unfortunate that this is the only novel for which she sold the copyright outright to the publisher....!]
The Peacock edition, illus. by Hugh Thomson, 1895
c2013 VABA News Blog
