Pride-and-Prejudice

Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on
the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The
commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews
contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary
criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history.
Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice through a variety of points of view and bring about a
richer understanding of this enduring work
COMMENTS
WALTER ALLEN
More can be learnt from Miss Austen about the nature of the novel than from
almost any other writer.
—from The English Novel (1954)
JANE AUSTEN
What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety
and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches
wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect
after much labour?
—from a letter to her nephew James Edward Austen (December 16, 1816)
E. M. FORSTER
Scott misunderstood it when he congratulated her for painting on a square of
ivory. She is a miniaturist, but never two-dimensional. All her characters are
round, or capable of rotundity.
—from Aspects of the Novel (1927)
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely
written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for
describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which
is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-wow strain I can
do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary