From Longman’s Cultural Editions series, Jane Austen’sPride and Prejudice , edited by Claudia Johnson and Susan Wolfson, offers the text of the first edition and is extensively annotated in several contexts, from Austen’s views, to cultural issues, to first reviews and critical reception.

Features

• A chronology coordinating the events of Austen’s life with key events in contemporary history and literary culture is included in the introduction.
• Footnotes identify cultural references, social codes and rituals, literary allusions, as well as unfamiliar word usages.
• Illustrations include the title page of the first edition (signed “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility,” which itself was signed anonymously, “By a Lady”); as well as images of the houses, forms of dress, and modes of conveyance that characterize the world of the novel.
• Contextual items including Austin’s letters, an orientation to money; a look at the “marriage market” for young women; discussion of socially favored “female character and conduct;” discussion of male conduct; a passages on the aesthetics of “the picturesque” that helps explain the invisible planning of Darcy’s grand, naturally tasteful estate, and the reviews the novel received.
• Austen’s letters and the reviews the novel received upon its publication in 1813, over the next decade as Austen’s fame emerged, and in comments from such readers as Lady Byron, William Wordsworth, and Charlotte and Emily Bronte illuminate the text.
• “A Guide to Further Reading” provides information about biography, editions, critical studies, films, and Web sites.