November 7, 2013 – Jane Austen in Vermont

If you are into your holiday shopping early, or compiling your own wish-list, here is a fine start: a must-have for your Jane Austen collection: the Folio Society’s latest edition of Pride and Prejudice, 2013.

“I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

One of the world’s favourite books, Pride and Prejudice has long been regarded as a classic romance. In Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Austen created the greatest pair of sparring lovers since Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick. This sparkling comedy of manners features an inimitable cast of characters including the obsequious Mr Collins, the autocratic Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Mrs Bennet, the most embarrassing mother in literature.

The award-winning Balbusso twins have contributed eight exquisite illustrations to this edition, as well as a striking cover design. The novel’s celebrated first line is blocked in gold on the slipcase. In a new introduction, the author Sebastian Faulks praises ‘a novel of almost boundless wit and charm that has withstood film and television adaptations and attempts to define it as a “fairy tale” or a “rom-com”.’

[Pride and Prejudice (Folio, 2013): image from the Balbusso website]