



Jane Austen wrote six novels, but Pride and Prejudice is frequently considered the most popular of her works. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)












Whither Canada?

While some 19th-century English novels pay a passing nod to Canada, particularly by packing off characters who have no future at home, this country doesn't register in Austen novels.

Yet Elaine Bander, president of the Canadian branch of the Jane Austen Society of North America, can speculate how Canada might have figured in Pride and Prejudice.

"I kind of imagine after a few years, Mr. Darcy equips the Wickhams with enough money to resettle in, say, New Brunswick  or Ontario."







Jane Austen House in Chawton, southern England, is looking forward to the 200th anniversary of the publication of Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice on Monday. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)





Not everyone was a fan

While Pride and Prejudice has been roundly praised, not everyone has been a fan of Austen's second novel.

Indeed, some of the criticism came from other famous authors, including Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain.

Bronte found the novel "limited," says Dalhousie's Maitzen. "She said there's no sense of the fresh air, there's no sense of the big expanse of life, there's no poetry in it, which seems to me a fair criticism, but you can see why Charlotte Bronte might say that because her idea of the novel would be so different."

Mark Twain was similarly not amused, Maitzen adds. "He said … every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shinbone."








A first edition of Pride and Prejudice is seen at the Jane Austen House in Chawton, southern England, on Jan. 24, 2013. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)




Family ties

One Vancouver resident has a special reason to mark the bicentary of Pride and Prejudice — a family tie to the author.

Freydis Welland is a descendant of Jane Austen's family, and says this year is a "very exciting" one for Janeites.

Austen had the "genius of a comic muse" and would read aloud her writings to her family, says Welland, whose mother was a co-founder of the Jane Austen Society of North America.

"I can certainly imagine her playing the role of each one of the characters in the novel one by one as she read it aloud."





But as Maitzen contemplates the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, she would be quite content if all the reinterpretations stopped popping up.
