The Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 6: 2,500 Headwords Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

Book Overview

This award-winning collection of adapted classic literature and original stories develops reading skills for low-beginning through advanced students. Accessible language and carefully controlled... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0194230937
• ISBN13: 9780194230933
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 121 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

DELICIOUS

This masterpiece is delicious, English Lit. at its best. I am enamoured with this book. The humor, the elegance of diction, the insolent, but addictive mother, Mr. Darcy and Lizzy's beset relationship, and the inteligences of the plot. I will read this book again, and again and again. Also,I prefer the A & E adaptation of the book(Double DVD). The version with KEIRA KNIGHTLY is o.K, but the former adaptation has actors that are more creditable as their characters.

Pride and Prejudice is the greatest chicklit classic ever written!

Miss Jane Austen (1775-1816) was born into the home of a clergyman at Steventon Rectory, She is the gem of all English authors in the realm of domestic romance and comedy. Jane needs a few middle class and wealthy families living in a rural setting to set her genius afire. Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 is justly the most famous, liveliest and perfectly plotted of all her few novels. You must read Pride and Prejudice if you have any claim to being a well educated person. The book is the grandmother of all the thousands of books that have been set in the Regency period featuring a love story between a young lady and a rich Byronic hero. None of these books can match Pride and Prejudice in its witty dialogue and insights into the human heart. The main characters are: The Bennet Family-Mr. Bennet is a fuddy-duddy bookworm of a clergyman. He is a poor father more interested in spending time in his study than it helping raise his rambunctious girls. Mrs. Bennet is a fatuous fool. An ignorant, self-indulgent, flippant idiot she has one goal-getting her five unwed daughters wed in prosperous matches with the local gentry and soldiery. Jane Bennet is the oldest "Miss Bennet". She falls in love with Mr. Bigley. She is an innocent, sweet young lady. Elizabeth Bennet is the novel's heroine and the most delightful young woman in all of English fiction! She is witty, wise, lively and beautiful. Elizabeth is probably based on Jane Austen. Her love is for Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy whom she is preudiced against due to what she perceives as his rudeness to her; his suppposed effort to break up the affair between Jane and Darcy and his putative mistreatment of soldier Wickham. Lydia and Kitty are younger daughters who are man-crazy, brainless daughters. Lydia elopes with the cad soldier Wickham. Mary is the bookworm daughter who is made fun of by Austen for her overly serious demeanor. Charles Bingley-the love interest of Jane Bennet. Fitzwilliam Darcy is the prideful scion of great wealth who falls in love with Elizabeth. He resembles characters in such fictional products as those penned by Samuel Richardson; Fanny Burney and women authors enjoyed by the young Jane Austen. Hilarious minor characters include the odious clergyman Mr. Collins who weds the impecunious Charlotte Lucas. Charlotte is on the verge of becoming an old main so she weds the ludicrous Collins. Collins had earlier proposed marriage to Elizabeth but had been refused. Lady Catherine DeBourgh-Darcy's aunt she is cruel and hateful to everyone she holds in disdain. She is one of those old dragons which populate the pages of great classic English fiction. The novel was written during the period of England's life and death struggle against Napoleon but there is no mention of the nation's affairs Austen keeps her keen but restricted focus on the lives of her ordinary people living in the retired village of Maryton. Many famous novelists list Jane Austen as their favorite author. No wonder

The Best Classic Ever Written!!!

After reading this book, my eyes have been opened to not only outward character but inner personality. Truly no other book has ever acheived international acclaim for so long. The reason is clear one of Jane Austen's best works, Pride and Prejudice has proven to contain the finest of elements which only contibutes to it's immortal relation of what happened during her days. Finally we have found a woman Shakespeare!!! A must read, for every literate.

That girl's got moxie!

Meet the Bennet sisters: demure Jane, witty Elizabeth, bookish Mary, impressionable Kitty, and lusty Lydia. It's the usual story: they don't have much in the way of dowries but need to marry upstanding English gentlemen...Elizabeth Bennet quickly emerges as the heroine with her wry sense of humor and take-no-prisoners attitude to social life. She puts all twentieth century heroines to shame when she tells off Mr. Darcy (while maintaining perfect decorum). Unusual twists and turns spark up the "marriage plot" of the book. There are some great villains, too.

A classic love story

I must confess up front that I am a sucker of love stories. As such, Pride and Prejudice had me hook, line, and sinker from the beginning, turning page after page to find out if Elizabeth, the heroine, would find happiness in the end.A female friend of mine recommended the book to me (as did my girlfriend) with the caveat that most guys she knew complained that "nothing happened" in it. Needless to say, if you're looking for action and intrigue, look elsewhere. There is some little intrigue in Pride and Prejudice, but the heroine(s) play a strictly passive role. All the excitement in the novel stems from the suspense of the Bennet sisters' romances.Another minor caveat: I was initially slightly distracted by Austen's style of writing, which sometimes seems a bit distant from the action of the narrative (at least to someone more accustomed to more modern works).However, I feel that this hardly detracts from what recommends Pride and Prejudice the most (and what all love stories require): interesting characters to whom the reader can become emotionally attached and believable obstacles to their deserved happiness.