Pride and Prejudice

About Book : Jane Austen was an English novelist and one of the best-read writers of England. Use of free and indirect speech in her novels has made her one of the most loved writers of British literature.

She led her life in a closely-knit large family. Austen was born on 16th December 1775. She received her primary education from her father and her elder brothers. Thereafter she along with her sister Cassandra was sent to a boarding school. Austen gained some knowledge through her own passion of reading too. The everlasting support of her family helped Austen develop into a professional writer.

Her training as an artistic writer started from her teenage years and went on until she was thirty-five years old. During these years, she wrote three main novels and started with the fourth. Her novels namely Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) were published, and she was then acknowledged as a published and successful writer.

She wrote two more novels, the Northanger Abbey and Persuasion but these were published after her death in 1817. Before death, she had started a new novel but could not complete the same and the novel was later on named as 'Sandition'.

Austen's plots were comic and they highlighted the importance of marriage for women. They proved the importance of marriage in a woman's life in order to get a secure economic life and social standing. Most of her work had moral issues.

She received very little fame in the form of positive reviews when she was alive for her writing. Until the mid of nineteenth century, her novels were read only by literate elite class. However, in 1869 her nephew introduced her work to a wider class of people. He wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen. Then, more people knew her work and they admired the same. In the 1940's, she was firmly acknowledged as a great English writer.

The biographical information about Jane is very less. She had written around 3000 letter to her sister Cassandra but there are only 160 letters left now. Jane's brother Admiral Francis Austen destroyed the remaining letters.

Jane's parents belonged to a good family. Her father, George Austen (1731-1805) belonged to a family that was engaged in woollen manufacturing. He served as a priest of the Anglican churches at Stevenson, Hampshire and of a village nearby. He also did farming and taught three or four boys who lived at his home.

After boarding school, Austen's father gave her access to a varied and large library of his own. He provided both Jane and Cassandra with expensive paper and other material to encourage them in their writing talents

Austen had a large family. She had six brothers and a sister. Both the sisters died unmarried. Jane was close to her brother Henry. He became a banker but then the bank failed and he became an Anglican clergyman.

He served as Jane's literary agent too. He had a large circle of friends and thus was able to provide her the knowledge and views of the social world that was not normally identifiable from within rural Hampshire. Jane's family and close friends often staged series of plays that contributed to her education as well. Most of the plays were comic and this suggests that the plays had an impact on Jane. She wrote poems, stories, plays for her own and her family's entertainment. These were compiled into a book called Juvenilia.

Pride and prejudice is the second novel written by her. In 1796, it was named as First Impressions. Later on, it was renamed as Pride and Prejudice. In January 1813, Egerton published a revision of First Impressions' as Pride and Prejudice'. He advertised the book a lot and the book became an immediate success. It brought three favourable reviews and sold very well.

About Author : In early 1816, Jane felt very ill. She had been ignoring her illness and continued to work earlier but now she was serious. Her health deteriorated day by day and she succumbed the next year to death. The cause of her death was later on discovered as a disease called the Addison's disease. She died in Winchester on the 18th of July, 1817.

Product details

• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Author Name  : Jane Austen
• Publisher : Indiana publishing house 
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 252 pages
• ISBN ‏ : ‎ 81-8408-214-2
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 480 g
• Dimensions :  21 x 14.2 x 2.4 cm

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