Pride and Prejudice (Dover Thrift Editions) by Jane Austen (Epub)

Description

Set in a small English village during 1812, this classic novel is one of the greatest love stories ever told!
A poor country squire is trying to find husbands for his five daughters. When one of them, Elizabeth, meets rich Mr. Darcy at a dance, they don’t find much in common. But during the next few months, they overcome their differences and fall in love.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III’s England, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet — a country squire of no great means and his scatterbrained wife — must marry off their five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are the headstrong second daughter Elizabeth and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy, two lovers in whom pride and prejudice must be overcome before love can bring the novel to its magnificent conclusion.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ There must be many thousands of digital versions of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I got this because I wanted to compare it with another that I had, and didn’t realize until it was on my kindle that the name of the author on the cover page is incorrect!! The author is NOT Charlotte Bronte!!!!! This is so inexplicable and appalling a mistake, I had to write and mention it so that it can (hopefully) be corrected. The rest of the text is fine. I don’t want it on my kindle, and have deleted it. How anyone could have confused Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte (author of Jane Eyre) is beyond me.

⭐ After reading the first few chapters (The chapters are very short) of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” I wondered how anyone could be interested in such pompous, egotistical, aloof and self serving characters?After reading on I said, “Wow! How could I be so interested in such characters?”Getting toward the middle of the book, I was hoping that it would never end.By the end of the book, I fully realized what a magnificent piece of writing I had just read.”Pride and Prejudice” is one of the best sociological studies about early nineteen century British loyalty and society I have ever read – where title, rank, fortune, and good looks are in many ways the requirements of an approved marriage, much, much more than love. In fact, this wonderful book might not be as relevant today as two hundred years ago, but there are still many traces of such societies throughout the world, today. It was not all that long ago in America, where marrying outside of your religion, or ethnicity, was looked down upon.The book is full of wonderful characters, but Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet is, in my opinion, the star. Her character is so wonderfully and fully realized that at times I felt her jumping off the page and directly into my life.Liza, a fellow member and friend on Goodreads, informed me that she had read the book twice and still was not sure if the ending was ‘sad’ or ‘funny.’ To me, it was funny and exceptionally rewarding but sad to think that a lady’s livelihood depended more on the wealth and rank of your partner than love.Quite an amazing book.

⭐ I love Pride and Prejudice. This review is not about the novel, but this specific edition. There was a beautiful, illustrated version of Pride and Prejudice published in 1894. This paperback is a poor replication of it. In all I paid about $20 for this copy. There were less than 300 copies printed of the original and can be found online for thousands of dollars. That is a pretty big financial commitment, so I started looking into replicas. I discovered this one and figured it was a nice way to dip my toes into this illustrated version. Overall, it is an okay copy. Some of the images are very pixelated, as shown in the photo. I have a screenshot of a scanned version of the original compared to what I received. The images in this paperback have far less detail than the original. There is a huge range in the quality of the images. However, this copy satisfies me enough and fulfills my wish of having this version. I wish more care was taken into the design of the front and back covers. The outside could have been truly beautiful instead of looking like a cheap knockoff.There is another publisher that does a hardcover copy of this 1894 edition that looks stunning. That one is priced at like $300 so I might upgrade to that in the future as a treat. I desperately want to get more copies of this book that are stunning. If you can afford it from the get go, I would probably go with that. If you cannot and are desperate for the peacock edition like I was, stick with this for now.

⭐ I bought “Pride and Prejudice” from them and when the book arrived it was the size of a magazine. I’ve never seen such a small font in a book. It was like trying to read the back of a medicine bottle. Then I bought “Animal Farm” from them and didn’t start reading it until the return window had passed. I get to page 116 and find I’m missing 32 pages … next page after 116 was 133. So now what? It was only $9 but sheesh. I won’t be buying any more books from theses people.

⭐ I’ll admit, the thing that made this novel easier for me to figure out was that I’d watched Pride and Prejudice (2005) starring Keira Knightley. I’d put off reading the actual Jane Austen novel for most of my life. This is not my usual fare, at all, but because a good friend of mine, Helen Moffett, is seeing the release of her P&P sequel Charlotte, I figured I’d better get reading so that I could have the background.Historical fiction written during contemporary times is one thing, but actual fiction from more than hundred years ago is quite another. Austen writes for an audience that would take conventions in clothing and the environment for granted, focusing instead of dialogue and mannerisms. So we’re left with a kind of shallow, limited third person that doesn’t feed readers who’re used to a deeper point of view. So it helps immensely for folks like me, who honestly don’t have a clue, to have watched that film. It gave me useful context. Don’t be ashamed to watch the film before reading the novel.I believe it does the book a disservice to evaluate it using contemporary standards. Authors these days have a deep well of literary conventions to draw from, so applying those to Austen will rob the book of much of its character. For me, P&P exists as a time capsule, offering a glimpse into particular cultural and social mores prevalent within English society at the time. We step into a world where characters are trapped by their status within society, and while it can be argued that many of Austen’s characters are shallow (um, hello, Mr Collins much), I feel that Austen is taking stabs at society. And it makes me also realise how much society has changed, and what we, as women, take for granted in terms of our liberties and empowerment in contemporary times.While I didn’t gain the same sort of enjoyment from Pride and Prejudice as I would from the usual titles I’ll slide onto my Kindle, I nonetheless walked away from this novel feeling as if I’d gained a better understanding as to why Regency-era stories have carved themselves such a beloved niche among readers. It’s easy to loathe some of the characters, and at a glance, people like Mrs Bennett seem facile and annoying, but if you dig a little deeper, the social commentary becomes crystal clear. Sure, Mrs Bennett’s obsession with marrying off her daughters seems exhausting, but if you understand her very real fears that she would not be able to care for them if they never got married – for there were no prospects for a woman in those days to have a career – then it’s possible to be more sympathetic towards her. Despite each character having perceived privileges, they themselves are trapped by their social standing. And don’t get me started on Mr Collins, and especially his appalling commentary when one of Elizabeth’s sisters elopes.It took me some time to get used to Austen’s style, and now that I’m done with the novel, I also realise it’s a story that begs being reread at some point. The beauty of the telling lies in what the characters have to say to each other, and how they respond to circumstances, and I feel on the first read through there were many subtleties that I may have missed.

⭐ “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen started off annoying me and ended up enchanting me. Up until about page one hundred I found this book vexing, frivolous and down right tedious. I now count myself as a convert to the Austen cult.I must confess I have been known to express an antipathy for anything written or set before 1900. I just cannot get down with corsets, outdoor plumbing and buggy rides. Whenever someone dips a quill into an inkwell my eyes glaze over. This is a shortcoming I readily own up to but have no desire to correct. So I admit to not starting this book with the highest of hopes. I did really enjoy Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility” however and so when my friend threw the gauntlet down I dutifully picked it up.Boy did I hate him at first. To get anywhere with this book one has to immerse oneself in the realities of life and marriage in the nineteenth century. At first all this talk of entailment and manners just left me cold. I liked the language to be sure. Austen’s dialogue is delightful through out but dialogue alone (no matter how delicious) does not a great novel make.A hundred pages or so in though I started to see what a shrewd eye for character this Austen woman had. Mr. Collins was the first person I marvelled at. His character springs forth fully formed as a total but somehow loveable ass. From that point on I found much to love about this book. I was so into it by the end that I was laughing at some characters, sympathizing with others and clucking my tongue at an unhappy few. In short I was completely absorbed.In conclusion I must now count myself a fan of Miss Austen’s novels (and not just their fim adaptations) and do so look forward to acqauinting myself with more of her work in the future. “Emma” anyone?

⭐ The print quality of this book was disappointing. The headers and footers were cut much too fine with the print almost on the edges of the paper but worse was the breaks in the printed lines where a sentence would beak part of the way across the page leaving a large blank space before continuing on the line below. All the text was there but it made for very disjointed reading spoiling the pleasure of reading this old classic. This was a regular occurrence throughout the book.The whole point of large print books is to make reading easier for the sight impaired, this book although large print because of the poor layout and lack of attention too detail did not make for the pleasant reading experience I had looked forward too. The story is as good as ever but this book as printed is very poor. I’ve probably been generous to give it four stars and only did so because it is hard to find large print books.

⭐ This is a lovely collection, and I made sure to grab it early because at 10,000 copies each I knew they would sell out. I appreciate that they came with a plastic jacket to protect the book, but it is very cheap cellophane and is not meant to be kept on the books. The die cuts are EXTREMELY delicate and you have to be careful when pulling them off of the shelf when they are next to each other. One die cut can grab another on a second book and rip. I wish that they had come with better quality covers, I’m definitely going to need to cover them myself. In addition, there were slight brown marks on my books, and much more browning on the inside of the dust jackets, where it appears that the die cutting machine got too hot and actually burned the paper. I’ve contacted several other book collector friends who confirmed that their set was the same. But for the price, they are a decent collection. I hope that when the future seasons books come out that they will address these issues.

⭐ A favorite that is listened to year after year! I was first introduced in an English Lit class in high school and I have read and reread this beautiful story at a rate of once or twice a year since.The characters are so well drawn, the follies so well orchestrated and the times captured in so much detail it almost takes your breath away. The writing is truly beautiful and flows over the reader like the softest piece of silk. The sentences are intricately constructed yet easily comprehensible and the meaning is not lost even though a single sentence might cover a third of a page. Jane Austen’s mastery of the English language is more remarkable today in this age of acronyms and sentence fragments than it was in her own time, I am sure.The story itself is incredibly detailed and the characters are drawn in a depth that is not commonly seen today. Eliza Bennett understands herself incredibly well and is able to recognize when she has made a mistake and rectify it in a gracious way that does not occur today. She is also able to repel unkind inquiries and remarks just as graciously. What she is not so easily able to do is forgive the chance hearing of an unkind remark said in a moment of pride. Hearing an unkind description of her appearance that is said by Mr. Darcy at a dance, she takes an instant dislike to him and from then on proceeds to be as unkind to him as her generous nature will allow. Mr. Darcy, however, after uttering these fateful words that he does not know were overheard, begins to have an attraction to Elizabeth that he fights for months afterwards. When he finally surrenders to his strong feelings for her, Eliza rejects him so utterly that he is shocked beyond recognition. He sets about trying to rectify her perceptions of him and is making a sound beginning when the unthinkable occurs. Can he overcome his pride? Can she overcome her prejudice?Listening to an excellent narration of this classic was almost as fun as understanding the story with the help of Mrs. Martindale, my saintly English Lit teacher, all those years ago. Rosamund Pike does a rather astounding performance. All of the voices she creates are well done, singular, and fun to listen to. I couldn’t stop listening and enjoyed every second of it!

⭐ I read this book as part of my concerted effort to fill in literary gaps in my reading history. And, to be honest, reading the current crop of new novels and works of non-fiction was starting to get me down. I needed a break. With few exceptions, it seems, the literary edges are all pretty sharp these days.And what a break this was. I can’t remember the last author I read that was as gifted at dialogue and character development. After every page I asked myself, “How did she do that?” The characters are nuanced, and they do grow, at least some of them, but Austen is able to maintain consistency and continuity within each character throughout the story and the abundant dialogue. Few authors of any era have accomplished that.The theater is the English landed gentry of the late 18th Century and the language, on the surface, reflects the theater, but the focus is the diverse cast of characters. She provides enough description to give the story context and realism but this is definitely a story about people and it could be people of any era. You will dislike some, laugh at the absurdity of others, and identify positively with a few. You will, however, feel them all come to life.And while it’s far from a glowing portrayal of the culture of the day it is not just a social commentary either. There is a message, but she tells a story, and, again, there aren’t many authors who have ever been able to pull that off. They usually succeed at one or the other.In the end, it was an uplifting read, not because of the storyline or the commentary, however. I’m not that interested in the culture of the British landed gentry of the 18th Century. I think I would go so far to say that I feel fortunate I was not born in the era in any class of society. It was the prose itself that was uplifting. That someone could write that effectively is really quite inspiring for a book lover.I highly recommend it.

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