Pride and Prejudice

The complete book in electronic form can be accessed via the link on the website of the publishing house SZKEO RF. The gift illustrated edition is printed on matte coated paper with a ribbon of the same color as the headband.

The novel “Pride and Prejudice” is the most famous work of the talented English writer Jane Austen (1775-1817). It was first published in the early 19th century and is now rightly considered a classic of British literature. “Pride and Prejudice,” as well as other works of the writer, such as “Sense and Sensibility” and “The Power of Common Sense,” forever put an end to the detached from life sentimental works that, judging by Pushkin's testimony, were read by young ladies like Tatiana Larina at the end of the 18th century. It is no coincidence that Austen began her literary activity with parodies of the love novels that existed in her time. A critical view of literature, the ability to analyze text and work with it was instilled in the future writer by her father, parish priest George Austen. He, like Jane's mother, was a well-educated person. George managed to provide his two daughters with a wonderful home education. Thanks to her talent for describing the movements of the human soul subtly, realistically, and sometimes with a considerable degree of humor or sarcasm, Jane Austen became a forerunner of realism in English literature. In the two centuries since the first publications of her novels, people's lives have changed incredibly; however, their feelings, motives for actions, and the decisions they make have remained the same. Unlike her heroines, the personal life of the writer herself did not work out. After experiencing a short romance in her youth, she never married. Jane died in 1817 at the age of 42, leaving several texts unfinished. Great literary fame came to the writer posthumously.

The beautiful and detail-accurate illustrations by two English artists, two brothers - Charles and Henry Brock, allow us to vividly present the characters of Jane Austen's works and the setting in which the events occur. Each of them could have become a character of Austen, although both lived and worked about a hundred years later - at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Charles Edmund Brock was born in 1870. He began illustrating books at twenty, creatively developing the style of Hugh Thomson, who is considered one of the best British masters of book illustration in the second half of the 19th century. Charles Brock achieved great success in this field: in addition to Austen's novels, he worked on illustrations for the works of Swift, Thackeray, and Eliot. Henry Matthew Brock was five years younger than Charles. He studied at the Cambridge School of Arts, also began illustrating, and became a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours.