Jane Austen began writing the novel which later became Pride and Prejudice in October of 1796 and finished it by August of the following year; she was then twenty-one years old. Little is known of this early version of the story beyond its original title: First Impressions. No copy of that original is known to exist. Three months after Miss Austen completed work on the book, her father offered it to a publisher in the hope that it would make it into print. The publisher refused without ever having seen the manuscript.

Fortunately for all of her admirers, whether Austen was discouraged or not by her first rejection, she continued to write; though, it was not until the winter of 1811, fully fourteen years after finishing First Impressions, that she again picked up that manuscript and began revising it into the version we know today as Pride and Prejudice. This occurred in the wake of her first publishing success--the publication of Sense and Sensibility on 30 October 1811. Pride and Prejudice was far more fortunate than its earlier incarnation; it was accepted for publication and was presented to the world on 28 January 1813.

Jane Austen's name was never attached to any of her published novels during her lifetime, and the title page of Pride and Prejudice read only:

BY THE AUTHOR OF "SENSE AND SENSIBILITY."

 

Visit the official Web Site of the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England.

The Jane Austen Centre is a new permanent exhibition which tells the story of Jane's Bath experience - the effect that living here had on her and her writing.

 Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath's many famous residents and visitors. She paid two long visits to Bath towards the end of the eighteenth century, and from 1801 to 1806 Bath was her home.

Her intimate knowledge of the city is reflected in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which are largely set in Bath.

The city is still very much as Jane Austen knew it, preserving in its streets, public buildings and townscapes the elegant well-ordered world that she portrays so brilliantly in her novels. Now the pleasure of exploring Jane Austen's Bath can be enhanced by visiting the Jane Austen Centre in Gay Street. Here, in a Georgian town house in the heart of the city, the visitor can find out more about Bath in Jane Austen's time and the importance of Bath in her life and work.

They have an attractive shop which offers an unrivalled selection of Jane Austen related books, videos, CD's, cassettes, cards, stationery, lace and needlepoint.

Enjoy!

There's a tendency for people to view the sudden popularity of Jane Austen as a reaction against some feature of current society. I think the phenomenon runs deeper than that. You don't have to be running or recoiling from something else to feel delight upon discovering Jane Austen."
-- Karen P.

 

"Jane Austen can in fact get more drama out of morality than most other writers can get from shipwreck, battle, murder, or mayhem."
-- Ronald Blythe