Pride and Prejudice Conference
Celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen's best-loved novel
Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge 21 - 23 June 2013
Conference Organisers: Professor Janet Todd and Dr Chloe Preedy
2013 marks the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, first published by
Thomas Egerton in 1813. Pride and
Prejudice was Jane Austen’s second novel; described by the author as her
‘own darling child’, it remains one of the best-loved English novels of all
time. The book’s popularity with readers is reflected in the extensive
attention it has received from literary scholars, the numerous screen and stage
adaptations of the novel that have been produced over the past decades, and the
frequency with which it has inspired literary spin-offs. From P. D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley and Seth
Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies, to the famous BBC television adaptation starring Colin Firth as Mr
Darcy, Pride and Prejudice has had a
rich and varied afterlife in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the
same time academic interest in Jane Austen’s eighteenth-century novel remains
equally strong, as recent developments in criticism generate fresh insights
into the psychological complexity of Jane Austen’s characters, a clearer
understanding of Austen’s place within the literary marketplace, and a
newly-charged appreciation of the socio-economic context in which Pride and Prejudice was first written
and read.
This conference celebrates two hundred years of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by uniting the past with the present, considering Austen’s best-loved novel in both its original contemporary context and through the lens of the numerous screen adaptations and literary spin-offs the book has inspired. Exploring the original historical context and modern afterlives of Pride and Prejudice, the conference will feature a series of talks by well-known Austen academics, readings from Pride and Prejudice by popular modern authors and media figures, and screenings of classic Jane Austen film and television adaptations, as well as a Regency ball and a day trip to Austen’s home village of Chawton.
For further information on any questions not answered here, please email contact us.
Regency Ball kindly sponsored by 