First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

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I can’t say that I liked one book better than the other, I liked them both pretty well but for different reasons. Walter Scott wrote in his journal, "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. She attempts to dissuade Mr Darcy from liking Elizabeth by ridiculing the Bennet family and criticising Elizabeth's comportment. In March 2010, Quirk Books published a prequel by Steve Hockensmith that deals with Elizabeth Bennet's early days as a zombie hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Kitty later married a clergyman who lived near Pemberley.

A heartbroken Jane visits her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in London to raise her spirits, while Elizabeth's hatred for Mr Darcy grows as she suspects he was responsible for Mr Bingley's departure. This time around, I have been particularly intrigued by the sheer number of periphery characters who have a key role in events. Fitzwilliam tells Elizabeth how Mr Darcy recently saved a friend, presumably Bingley, from an undesirable match.

When Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, he cites their economic and social differences as an obstacle his excessive love has had to overcome, though he still anxiously harps on the problems it poses for him within his social circle. For the upper-middle and aristocratic classes, marriage to a man with a reliable income was almost the only route to security for the woman and the children she was to have. Despite this rejection, First Impressions remained, according to Butler who cites Jane’s letters to Cassandra, a family favorite. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition on which many modern published versions of the novel are based. Darcy's first letter to Elizabeth is an example of this as through his letter, the reader and Elizabeth are both given knowledge of Wickham's true character.

The opening line of the novel announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Like much of Jane's life, the true extent of any possible relationship between them may never be known, but it is a fascinating premise for this articulate, beautifully-rendered sketch of a young Jane's life. Every time I re-read this book, I see the symptoms of his love for her earlier and earlier; this time around, I could see it even in their very first dialogue, after Miss Taylor’s wedding.David Nokes, however, says that after leaving the rectory at Steventon, “First Impressions” was rarely brought to read aloud, indicating a change that occurred after the move. However, as the novel closes, "…through curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself", Lady Catherine condescends to visit them at Pemberley.

Emma was Austen’s fourth novel and was the only one of the author’s novels to bear a dedication, to the Prince Regent.This book, which became a New York Times bestseller, parallels the life of an Austen enthusiast and Austen’s life. Other than First Impressions, which is a contemporary version of Pride and Prejudice, one may find Possibilities ( Persuasion), Amanda ( Emma), Northpointe Chalet ( Northanger Abbey), and Reason and Romance ( Sense and Sensibility). Seen in this way, free indirect discourse is a distinctly literary response to an environmental concern, providing a scientific justification that does not reduce literature to a mechanical extension of biology, but takes its value to be its own original form. Pride and Prejudice and Poison, Four Months to Wed, Forced to Marry and The Rescue of Elizabeth Bennet. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literature.