Happy 200th Birthday, Pride and Prejudice!

Thanks to Unputdownables for posting this on Facebook!

The first edition of Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28th, 1813, and it has been diverting readers excessively ever since. :) I can't even recall the first time I read it--most likely in my late teens or early twenties--but it's one of the few books that I return to regularly.

People use books for so many different purposes--entertainment, information, growth, enlightenment. Especially when my finances or responsibilities don't allow me to travel, I use books as a way to be a tourist in other countries and cultures. If I can't GO somewhere my heart is pulling me, I'll read about it, obsessively in some cases. P&P was one of the books that showed me how literature could allow me to travel through time as well as geography. Whenever I pick it up, I'm sucked into 19th century small-town England. By the time Elizabeth is visiting the Lake Country with her relatives, I usually feel like I've been refreshed by a vacation of my own.

Happy birthday to one of my very favorite books, and in case you're wondering about the Hey Girl quote, it comes from Chapter 8. Loosely rephrased. :)

"A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved." [Caroline Bingley]

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading." 

That is one of the reasons why generations of women have found Mr. Darcy so dreamy. :)