19th century
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication.[39] Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron, called it "the fashionable novel".[39] Noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes declared that he "would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels".[42]
Throughout the 19th century, not all reviews of the work were positive. Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to Lewes, wrote that Pride and Prejudice was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck".[42][43] Along with her, Mark Twain was overwhelmingly negative of the work. He stated," “Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone,” Twain wrote in one letter to a friend."[44]
Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of Pride and Prejudice was excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade" and should have had a chapter "of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Buonaparté".[45]
Walter Scott wrote in his journal, "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice."[46]
20th century
You could not shock her more than she shocks me, Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle class Describe the amorous effects of 'brass', Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety The economic basis of society.
W. H. Auden (1937) on Austen[42]
The American scholar Claudia L. Johnson defended the novel from the criticism that it has an unrealistic fairy-tale quality.[47] One critic, Mary Poovey, wrote that the "romantic conclusion" of Pride and Prejudice is an attempt to hedge the conflict between the "individualistic perspective inherent in the bourgeois value system and the authoritarian hierarchy retained from traditional, paternalistic society".[47] Johnson wrote that Austen's view of a power structure capable of reformation was not an "escape" from conflict.[47] Johnson wrote the "outrageous unconventionality" of Elizabeth Bennet was in Austen's own time very daring, especially given the strict censorship that was imposed in Britain by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, in the 1790s when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.[47]
21st century
- In 2003 the BBC conducted a poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.[48]
- In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.[49]
- The 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 2013 was celebrated around the globe by media networks such as the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph, among others.[50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
