Pride and Prejudice: The complete novel, with nineteen letters from the characters’ correspondence, written and folded by hand

Pride and Prejudice: The Complete Novel, with Nineteen Letters from the Characters' Correspondence, Written and Folded by Hand
by Jane Austen
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9781452184579
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Pages: 240
Genre: Literature
Publisher: Chronicle Books

The Complete Novel, with Nineteen Letters from the Characters' Correspondence, Written and Folded by Hand

Fingers crossed, my binging might be at an end; after my last book , I had a sudden desire to re-read Pride and Prejudice and when I went to my shelves to grab a copy (it being amongst the titles I have no willpower to refuse whenever I see one in the shops), I saw this one waiting for me.  Perfect.

Of course, Pride and Prejudice, is a 5-star read for me, once and always, but this edition gets 5 stars for the format.  Since my discovery of Griffin & Sabine, I’ve been a sucker for books with physical bits that are part of the story, and truly, my thoughts when purchasing this went no further than ‘ooh! letters!’.  But upon opening it, I read the introduction by Barbara Heller and realised this isn’t just a novelty, but a tremendous amount of effort went into creating the letters themselves as accurately as possible.  Not just hand-written, but hand-written in replica’s of period letters, each character being assigned a distinctive hand; Heller then found the Society of Scribes of New York, and members wrote each letter with pen and ink, using the imperfections inherit in handwriting to achieve perfection.

The folding, addressing and postage too were all painstakingly researched and replicated, involving advice and instruction from the treasurer of the Midland (GB) Postal History Society.

All efforts to avoid anachronisms were made, and the only variation from true authenticity are the few (2?) pivotal letters where Austen herself only quotes them partially.  Here, as Heller states in the introduction, and in the Appendix, where she has notes on each letter individually, some compromise had to be made.  As it would do no good to only include the part of the letter quoted in the text, Heller consulted various sources, and from the summaries given in the text, attempted to recreate what the original letter might have been.  Here, I think, she only partially succeeds, as there was just no matching the tones exactly, but she made up for this by keeping these ad libs as brief as possible so as not to interfere with the authenticity any more than strictly necessary.

MT made the comment that the book looked unwieldy to read, and I agree that some might find the way the text block is broken up by the glassine envelopes, making the book feel ‘crunchy’ might annoy or turn off some readers, but I frankly loved it.  It made the feel of the book somehow ‘more’, like a scrapbook of an adventurous life, perhaps.

So, a novelty, definitely, but a novelty done with authenticity and every effort at verisimilitude.  Definitely not something that would enhance every title, but the importance of letter-writing to Austen’s works makes it a perfect fit.  This is definitely an edition I’d give to any Austen fan who enjoys something just a little more from their favorite titles.