Illustrating Pride and Prejudice for a late Victorian mass market

Part of Plymouth International Book Festival

A must for fans of Pride and Prejudice, this talk examines the beautifully detailed character illustrations in John Dicks’ 1887 edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and looks at how they tell us much about how Austen’s novel was read in the late 19th century when there was a huge rise in demand for affordable books.

Readers would sometimes have to wait for decades for an affordable edition of a book to be released following the first expensive edition only which only the rich, upper-classes could afford.

Dr Annika Bautz, author of The Reception of Jane Austen and Walter Scott: A Comparative Longitudinal Study and Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Sense and Sensibility, and a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Plymouth University, researches Romantic and Victorian fiction and is an expert on the history of the book.

£4