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Type of bind: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.7
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 382
Printing Date: May 29, 2008
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Release Date: May 29, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 18353
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' So begins the delightful adventures of the witty and free-spirited Elizabeth Bennet and the proud but quite eligible Mr. Darcy in one of the very first romantic comedies in the history of the novel.
This Penguin Enriched E-Book Classic features:
? The most complete e-version of Pride & Prejudice for e-book readers, including Kindle or Sony Reader
? A chronology and suggestions for further reading
? A filmography
? Period book reviews of Pride & Prejudice
? 'What did Jane Eat?' - selected period recipes, including 'How to Prepare Tea'
? A literary tour of noteworthy Jane Austen sites, including a grey and white map of sites from Pride & Prejudice
? Period-appropriate grey and white illustrations of fashion, home d?cor, architecture, and transportation, as well as instructions on dancing and social etiquette
? Linked notes and commentary allow readers to further explore Jane Austen and her wide-ranging appeal
Amazon.com:
'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'
Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, 'Call me Ishmael,' the very first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.
Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she very first began to love him: 'It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my very first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.' She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet 'as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print'. Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I won't presume to review Austen, so this review covers the quality of the Penguin release. Many of us have discovered that the "free" ebooks on Gutenburg and other sites frequently have such poor formatting that they are irritating to read. One can either re-edit the book to fix the problems, or just live with them and have an inferior and annoying reading experience.
Penguin's P&P is the closest ebook equivalent to the joy of reading a quality physical book--the text is perfectly formatted for the Kindle, it's been proofed, and the supplemental material is almost overwhelming. Detailed intros, useful hyperlinking and a wealth of information on Austen's times, including fashion, furniture, and food and drink, are included. It's truly an immersive experience.
I believe this book will be seen as a turning point for ebooks: the point at which editorial and publishing quality became a significant purchase criterion. Early ebook adopters (myself included) were willing to spend hours cleaning up Gutenburg editions and formatting them for the device du jour. No longer. The ebook is moving past the early adopter stage and is making inroads into a market that expects quality editing, publishing, and supplemental materials. I'll definitely pay a reasonable amount for an ebook that I can just start reading, instead of tinkering with, and that provides a comfortable feeling of having gotten one's money's worth.
Penguin has set the bar for ebook quality with this release. I urge anyone with a Kindle to get a copy--*this* is the ebook experience we've been wanting.
Rated by buyers -
This is a very good edition of Pride and Prejudice, the fact that it is on Kindle is a bonus! The story reads well on the Kindle, the notes all link, the picture are clear, and it has many extras that the good paper versions have, and a couple of extras I've never seen in a print version. Just wonderful. You can get this "book" public domain, for free and get it on an ereader, but this version is formatted so well, and has so many extras about the author, the time in which she lived and habits of the day that it is worth the money. It is the only ereader edition I have found that has the notes linked available and fully functional. I am looking forward to reading the other Penguin enhanced classic that they put out for Kindle.
Rated by buyers -
No need to review the book itself. What I want to address are the hyper linked notes and footnotes.
One of the big criticisms of other books on the Kindle is that it was very hard to acess notes and footnotes. It was so much trouble, that most people did not even bother.
Penguin has figured it out! They have hyperlinked the notes and the footnotes, so that you can get right to them with your Kindle scroll wheel, and not lose your place in the book.
More publishers need to do the same!
Rated by buyers -
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 in three volumes, the customary presentation of a novel in the early 19th Century. Penguin Press has provided Kindle owners with a wonderful enhanced version of the novel preserving the three volume format without attempting to standardize or modernize the text.
The Penguin book is presented by Juliette Wells, Enhanced E-book Features Editor. It is edited with an introduction and informative notes by Vivien Jones. The result is a very readable yet scholarly treatment of the novel, with a biography of Jane Austen, 19th Century reviews of the book, descriptions of how to make tea and Jane Austen's eating habits, and much more.
The last time I read Pride and Prejudice was in 1966 in an English literature class in college. I challenged the professor's choice of reading material as completely irrelevant given the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement and protests on my college campus, San Francisco State. It was a pleasure to reread the book with the wisdom of age supplemented by the excellent notes throughout the three volumes. Kindle owners can, with a spin of the wheel and a click, read explanations of the semantics of the vocabulary used by Austen, consider content interpretations, view illustrations of fashion, learn historical dance steps, and see period architecture.
The focus of the production, of course, is the novel with its themes of very first impressions, pride, vanity, seduction, feminism, prejudice, sexism, fatal attraction, society, intellectual domination, morality, etiquette, marriage, heritability, class structure, the family as a purposeful unit, and personal happiness. I highlighted many passages and notes to read again and enjoy. One example is from Volume 1 when Darcy says to Elizabeth, "There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." Another example of my highlights is from Volume 2 when Elizabeth states, "The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." And here is an example of an explanatory note I highlighted from Volume 3, "e3. Elizabeth's determination here matches her effort throughout the novel to pursue what she considers to be her own happiness; compare her response to Mr. Collin's proposal of marriage in chapter 19." The novel, notes, and other features allow the reader to experience the historical context of the very first edition.
Before reading Pride and Prejudice, I reread James Joyce's Ulysses on my Kindle with Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated paperback book as a guide. It would have been a better reading experience to have this excellent source integrated with the novel. Penguin's enhanced e-books with built in reference features will be excellent for new publications of classic novels. I learned a great deal more about Austen's novel in the convenient Kindle format than I did 42 years ago in college. Hopefully, I'll be able to add many enhanced Penguin classics to my Kindle Library.
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