Pride and Prejudice

From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by type superstar Jessica Hische.

It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectable hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. Art-directed by Paul Buckley, the series features unique art by Jessica Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to a Wes Anderson film to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, Penguin Drop Caps debut with an 'A' for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's My Ántonia.

A is for Austen. Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen's beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth's early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy is a prejudice only matched by the folly of his arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to true feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.

Review by John Purcell

My second favourite Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice, is just delightful. I don't mean to say it's light or frivolous. Austen is only frivolous when she wants to be and then it is always perfectly timed. Pride and Prejudice is delightful in that there is so much to entertain us.

With Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen delivered the world a perfect template for all future romances, but also set an almost impossibly high standard. As if to say - I make the mould, I break the mould. No one who followed, in my view, has ever bettered Pride and Prejudice.

Reading it again, I discover more and more in both Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. These two figures, draw me back to the novel. Elizabeth, so lively and bright, our guide through the assembled company, which include her family and neighbours, and a sprinkling of the high born. Austen might have made Elizabeth more cynical, her words more biting, but instead gave her a kind and loving heart. And Mr Darcy, immediately misunderstood, languishes in misery which is only in part of his own making. Where Mr Darcy might have been a knight in shining armour, Austen gave him deep flaws, but was generous enough to give him the ability to change.

No one who reads Pride and Prejudice, in the right spirit, is ever able to forget the powerful romance at the heart of it, but equally, none can forget the Bennets, Mr Collins, Mr Wickham, and the host of secondary characters which populate its pages.

This is a book for reading on a winter's day when you've got the sniffles and you're wearing comfy pjs and bed socks under a blanket on your favourite couch. Once read, Pride and Prejudice becomes your partner in life. When in need, you'll return to it again and again.

About the Author

Jane Austen wrote two literary classics--Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice--before she turned 21. And although she never married, she led a happy and active life, seemingly untouched by the dramatic incidents that filled her characters' lives.