The Annotated Pride and Prejudice

The Annotated Pride and Prejudice is an edition of Jane Austen’s most famous novel with extensive scholarly notes and commentary added to assist modern readers in following the historical, social, and literary references that Austen’s original 1813 audience would have understood immediately.

Pride and Prejudice itself is the central love story of English literature. Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five daughters of the modestly genteel Bennet family of Hertfordshire, encounters the wealthy and proud Mr Darcy at a country ball. The two take an immediate dislike to each other. Elizabeth’s prejudices and Darcy’s pride become the obstacles that the rest of the novel works through, with various complicating events including the elopement of the foolish younger sister Lydia, the visit to Darcy’s great estate at Pemberley, and the various interventions of family and friends, eventually bringing the two together in one of the most satisfying romantic resolutions in nineteenth century English fiction.

The annotations in this edition add several layers of useful background that modern readers cannot get from the text alone. There are notes on the income figures and on the social meaning of the various amounts mentioned, which were intuitively understood by Austen’s first readers but which are entirely opaque to most readers today. There are notes on the various social customs and conventions that govern the novel’s events. There are notes on the literary and cultural references that Austen sprinkles through the text.

For readers who have already read Pride and Prejudice and want to understand the novel more fully, this kind of annotated edition is invaluable. For readers approaching the novel for the first time, a plain edition may be the easier introduction.