Every Day Is Special: January 28 - Pride and Prejudice Day

January 28 - Pride and Prejudice Day

Posted on January 28, 2020

The wonderful novel Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United Kingdom on this date in 1813.

This was the second novel written by Jane Austen, a British woman raised in a respectable but not wealthy family. As she wrote the novel, she read aloud each finished bit to her family, and she got even better reviews from them than she had for her first, Sense and Sensibility. Austen's books were originally published anonymously. S&S was published with the author given as "A Lady," and P&P was published as "By the author of Sense and Sensibility.

Pride and Prejudice got great reviews and sold out its first printing. Soon it went into additional printings and was translated into French; a bit later there was a third printing and several more translations.

More than 200 years later, P&P is still going strong! It appears near the top of several lists as people's "most loved" book - and it has a great reputation with scholars as well as the general public. More than 20 million copies of the original novel have been sold, and it has been translated into at least 35 languages. P&P has inspired a LOT of other books plus movies and TV mini-series; many a modern author / screenwriter has cashed in on the perpetual popularity with prequels, sequels, versions from other characters' points of view, expansions, adaptations, and modernizations.

Books and movies like Bridget Jones's Diary, Bride and Prejudice, The Jane Austen Book Club, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Death Comes to Pemberley, Eligible, Austenland...well, I could go on and on, but suffice to say that Austen's romantic novels, and ESPECIALLY Pride and Prejudice, form a sturdy backbone for an entire industry!

My absolute favorite: the A&E mini-series version of P&P, with Colin Firth as the famous Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as main character Elizabeth Bennet.