Friday 24 April 2009

Pride and Prejudice


Pride and Prejudice
Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended, and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will include writing in English from various genres and differing times. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is edited by Richard Bain, Vice Principal, Norham Community Technology College, North Shields.
Customer Review: best Austen novel - so far
After seeing a number of adaptations, I finally decided to read all of Austen's novels. Northanger Abbey was not bad, and Sense and Sensibility is excellent. However, this is the best so far. While there is a lot of insightful comment on the custom of English society of the time, and discussion of the character's motivation, the book just sparkles during the interchanges between them. While those between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are justifiably famous, I would say that many of the others are at the same level. My favorite are perhaps the interchanges between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth. I am very much looking forward to reading the remaining three completed novels.
Customer Review: Drivel
This is a terrible novel. I was expecting a "classic" when I read this and the only reason that I can think of for this book to be considered a classic is because it was written by a woman at a time when women were repressed in society. The plot is shallow. It is simply a love story with a few hints of irony thrown in. The characters are very unlikable. In fact, I hate the characters because they are shallow and self-centered. Also, Austen clearly never learned that readers do not like run-on sentences because the so called "novel", consists of run-on sentences that sometimes consist of more than one page. Austen also describes everything way too much, when one sentence is clearly enough. This novel is complete trash, and I really regret having to read it for my literature class. I could have simply read the celebrity tabloids, and I would have been exposed to as informative and moving of a story as this piece of trash.

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