When
the rich, single Mr Bingley arrives in the neighbourhood, Mrs Bennet is
determined to get at least one of her five daughters married off. She becomes
even more hopeful when Bingley’s even richer friend Mr Darcy shows up, but
whilst Mr Bingley and Jane Bennet do seem to be instantly smitten, Mr Darcy
makes a bad first impression on Elizabeth when she overhears him saying she’s
not exactly hot. Throw in a couple of tarty younger sisters and some lush young
officers, and this classic book isn’t nearly as boring and inaccessible as you
might think.
I don’t mind if BookByYou rewrite E. Nesbit’s books, but rewriting Jane Austen would be sacrilege. So I was very glad to see that very few changes had been made to the text. The only additions I noticed were BookByYou’s mentions of hair colour, eye colour and build. So any mentions of Elizabeth’s ‘fine eyes’ are now Sophia’s ‘fine green eyes’. It is a little bit annoying at times as Jane Austen has weighted every sentence so perfectly, any extra words disrupt the rhythm, but the descriptions have to be there and the additions could have been a lot clumsier and less convincing than they were. The editors couldn’t have done any better without rewriting the text even more, and I’m glad they didn’t do that.
I love
my personalised Pride & Prejudice.
I've always felt it's one of the best books in the world, a book I don’t think I’ll ever have read too
many times. But being part of the book and playing the role of Elizabeth made
it even more enjoyable because I’ve always wanted to be in the book. I was only
twelve the first time I read it, so I identified more with Lydia at first. She
likes officers, I like footballers, it’s all about what colour top they wear. Now,
I prefer Jane because she’s just so lovely, but I still chose to be Elizabeth
in this book because I fancy Mr Darcy (who doesn’t?), though Mr Bingley is
growing on me.
There are loads of reviews of Pride &
Prejudice all over the internet, and you probably don’t need me to tell you it’s
brilliant. But if you’ve ever dreamt of being Elizabeth, Jane, Lydia, Mr Darcy,
Mr Bingley or Mr Wickham, you now officially can. Pride & Prejudice can make you cry with laughter....or just cry. Even the most objectionable characters are fascinating to read about. Elizabeth is intelligent and witty, and not afraid to put people in their places, Jane has the sweetness I can only dream of, and girls were dreaming about Mr Darcy long before Colin Firth dived into that lake.
It all works beautifully until Jane starts
writing to Elizabeth about Mr Wickham. In the letter, he is called W for short.
In my personalised version, the character’s surname begins with G, but he’s
still called W in the letter, which could be confusing, especially if your Mr
Darcy or Mr Bingley happens to be a Mr W. If you know the book, you’ll know who
‘W’ is. If you don’t know the book, you might still be able to guess from the
context. But you might end up feeling very confused. So watch out for that one. 'Mr W' is the bad guy.
There are also a few names you don’t really
want to use for personalisation. Jane Austen has a lot of important characters,
but only six are personalised. You have to choose new names for Jane, Elizabeth
and Lydia Bennet, but they have two other sisters called Mary and Kitty/Catherine
(there are actually two Marys in the book and two Catherines, though you
shouldn’t have too much trouble telling them apart). So you can’t really use
Mary or Kitty/Catherine as personalised names. This sort of thing can get
confusing even when you know the book – as I discovered when I created my own Sense & Sensibility. I would also avoid
using Charlotte, Caroline, Louisa, Georgiana, Mr Collins, Mr Gardiner or Mr Hurst as personalised
names.
I gave the Bennets a Welsh name, and it
worked even better than I imagined. The nearby village is called Meryton, and
that looks quite Welsh. Hertfordshire is so easy to misread as Herefordshire,
which is nearly in Wales, and if the distance between Wales and Kent isn’t
quite the distance that Jane Austen describes, even her most devoted fans would
have to admit that her knowledge of geography isn’t the best.
