Pride & Prejudice
Jane Austen
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” So begins Jane Austen’s most famous novel, the story of the Bennet family trying to find love—or in lieu of that, husbands—for five daughters. The story focuses on Elizabeth and her run-ins with Mr. Darcy, the most prideful man she’s ever met. Ultimately a love story, this novel also highlights issues with social class, 19th-century expectations for women’s behavior, family and integrity.
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IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections
Place of publication: England
Language: English
Era: 19th Century
Genre: Fiction
Author: Female
Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts
Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation
Full text, basic summaries, and overviews
Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | Full Text | Various Sources
Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain, so the internet is full of options for reading the text. We’ve chosen three:
Full text from The Project Gutenberg, Ful text on Spark Notes, broken into chapters, Full text on E-books Directory with pages that look like a book
Pride and Prejudice | Full Text Audio | Various Sources
LibriVox has six options for listening to the novel, some read entirely by one person, some completed collaboratively.
Listen here
Pride and Prejudice Movie Clips | YouTube | Mistress of Pemberly
This YouTube account is fantastic. There are playlists that just show one version of the movie, but this account also has playlists of scenes so students can see how two different movie adaptations show the same scene from the novel.
Watch here
Pride and Prejudice (Movie Clips) | YouTube | Eraida Elizabeth | Playlist
This user has compiled movie clips from the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfayden.
Watch here
Pride and Prejudice Study Guide | Course Hero
This page is full of information for Pride and Prejudice—overviews & summaries, themes, motifs, quotes, discussion questions and more. All content is also available in video form.
Read more Watch here
Pride and Prejudice Study Guide | Spark Notes
Also full of good information: summaries & analysis, literary devices, quick quizzes and more.
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Pride and Prejudice: Crash Course Literature | YouTube | CrashCourse
Part 1 covers social and historical context of the text, Austen’s style, and the dilemmas the major characters face. Part 2 covers the politics of the book and its attitudes towards money, class and gender.
Watch Part 1 Watch Part 2
About the author
Jane Austen Society of North America
All four of these websites are devoted to Jane Austen and provide well-organized, interesting information.
Jane Austen Society of North America, Jane Austen's House, Jane Austen, British Library - Jane Austen, Wikipedia
The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen - Iseult Gillespie | YouTube | Ted-Ed | 5:00
”Iseult Gillespie explores the sly societal satire and unique tongue-in-cheek humor of Jane Austen.
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The Untold Story of Jane Austen | Behind Closed Doors | Timeline | YouTube | 58:45
In this BBC documentary, “Lucy Worsley explores the different houses in which Jane Austen lived and stayed, to discover just how much they shaped Jane’s life and novels.”
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LITERATURE - Jane Austen | YouTube | The School of Life | 7:02
This video looks at Austen as a moralist attempting to teach readers how to live better lives.
Watch here
Pride and Prejudice Publication Article | ZSR Library | Megan Mulder | 2013
This article shares the timeline and circumstances of Pride and Prejudice’s publication as well as Austen’s other novels.
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Articles, essays, and videos about Pride and Prejudice
Historical Context of Pride and Prejudice | Chicago Public Library
The toolbar to the left have additional resources related to Pride and Prejudice, including a bio, discussion questions, and chronology.
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Jane Austen: Shaping the Standard of Women’s Education | Elizabet McElligott, Wartburg College
Part history paper, part literary analysis, including a discussion of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey.
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Beyond Marital Bliss: A Redemption of Motherhood in Jane Austen | Georgia College | Destiny Cornelison, English MA Thesis
This paper also includes analysis of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. Introduction is on PDF pages 6-10. Pride and Prejudice pages 11-27.
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In/Significance: The Participation of Fathers in Jane Austen’s Novels | Najean Lee | University of Michigan | BA Thesis
This paper argues that “the fathers play a vital role in the development of their daughters’ personalities and the social interaction they have with others.”
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Exploring Interiority in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice | Baily Thompson | 2019
This is a long thesis—117 pages—and might be best suited to a jigsaw activity or presented as excerpts. The section on Pride and Prejudice starts on PDF page 60.
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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries | YouTube
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is “a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice” and “told in vlog-style by Lizzie Bennet as she narrates the trials and tribulations of her family life with the help of her best friend and aspiring filmmaker, Charlotte Lu, ‘practically perfect’ older sister, Jane, and easily excitable younger sister, Lydia.” This series was the first web series to win an Emmy, for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media.
Watch here
How a Team of Calligraphers Brought Jane Austen’s Fictional Letters to Life | Atlas Obscura | Jessica Leigh Hester | 2020
Calligraphers worked to handwrite the letters present in Austen’s stories. The article discusses how the calligraphers worked to have personality reflected in penmanship.
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Mapping Pride and Prejudice | Lancaster University Digital Humanities Hub | Lex Elliott | 2016
This article is about how modern students used Google MyMaps to track the locations in Pride and Prejudice and see how those locations also reflect portrayal and aspects of gender within the novel.
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Lesson plans and other teaching resources
Pride and Prejudice | The Great American Read | PBS Learning Media
This plan includes an activity on creating character sketches and post-viewing questions if you’ve watched the movie.
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Signet Classics Teachers Guide for Pride and Prejudice | Nancy Posey
This guide includes a character list, synopsis, pre-, during-, and post-reading activities that range from reader response to deeper analytical questions.
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Teaching Jane Austen with the New York Times: A Celebration of Her Work, 200 Years After Her Death | The New York Times | Katherine Schulten and Caroline Crosson Gilpen | November 2017
This narrative hyperlinks a wide-range of activities to do with students.
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Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: The Novel as Historical Source | EDSITEment! | NEH.org | Crhistine Compston | November 2009
A very nice lesson that includes guiding questions, learning objectives, a preparation list for teachers (with links to additional resources), two activities and resources for assessment.
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Videos | British Library
This page links more than 20 short documentaries exploring the context in which some of the Romantic and Victorian eras greatest works of literature were written. The page includes videos on Jane Austen: “class and marriage,” “gender and morality,” public and private space,” “the novel and social realism,” and “Jane Austen’s manuscripts.”
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Teaching POC Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice at a PWI in 2020 | JASNA | Sofia Prado Huggins | 2021
This website is more reflective narrative than lesson plan, but it has great information about connecting the story and themes in Pride and Prejudice to students’ actual lives. Huggins provides some examples of POC adaptations of Pride and Prejudice along with how she approached them with her students.
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Shopping List
Texts and other resources you may find helpful.
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mass Market Paperback at Amazon.com
Pride and Prejudice Paperback at Amazon.com
Pride and Prejudice: A Classics Illustrated Edition Paperback at Amazon.com
Pride and Prejudice: The Complete Novel, with Nineteen Letters from the Characters' Correspondence, Written and Folded by Hand
Hardcover at Amazon.com
Approaches to Teaching Pride and Prejudice by Maria McClintock Folsom
Paperback at Amazon.com
Pride and Prejudice DVD
2005 edition staring Kiera Knightley
2010 (restored edition) staring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle