Happy 200th Birthday to "Pride & Prejudice"

Alright, I admit it! I've never read a single thing Jane Austen has ever written. I am not proud of admitting this tidbit, but hopefully some day I'll get around to reading one of her novels.

Nonetheless, I still find it exciting to learn that today marks the 200th birthday of Jane Austen's beloved novel Pride & Prejudice! Long live Jane Austen!!

I stumbled upon an article this morning on The New Yorker website titled Happy Two-Hundredth Birthday, “Pride and Prejudice” by William Deresiewicz. In his article, Mr. Deresiewicz writes the following:

The most beloved novel in the language was written by a rural parson’s daughter with no formal education, in ten months, between the ages of twenty and twenty-one, and published two hundred years ago today. That’s not entirely true: she revised it later, but probably not very much. Elizabeth Bennet’s story was largely composed by someone Elizabeth Bennet’s age.

Two hundred years. But there seemed little chance, two hundred years ago, that many people would remember either the novel or its author by now. The draft that she produced at twenty-one was rejected by a London publisher sight unseen. Other disappointments followed, and after a series of personal upheavals, she gave up writing altogether. But circumstances stabilized and hope returned, and by the time of her death, just four years after “Pride and Prejudice” came out (four years during which she finished “Mansfield Park,” and wrote “Emma” and “Persuasion” from scratch), her brother was willing to venture the claim that her novels were fit to be placed “on the same shelf as the works of a D’Arblay and an Edgeworth.”

To read more of Mr. Deresiewicz's article, click on the link above.

 Are you a Jane Austen fan? What do think of Austen's writing style? Have you read Pride and Prejudice and what are your thoughts about this novel?