![]() It seems likely that she was influenced by Cecilia when she wrote Pride and Prejudice. In Burney’s story, Cecilia capitulates – unlike in Austen’s, where Elizabeth eventually wins over Mr Darcy, despite Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s – and Darcy’s own – pride. Austen admired Burney’s novel and even mentioned it in another of her own novels, Northanger Abbey. if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.’Ĭonsequently, the terms ‘pride’ and ‘prejudice’ run throughout the novel, as they do in Austen’s. But the most important precursor to Austen’s novel by a long way is Fanny Burney’s 1782 novel Cecilia, in which that phrase, ‘pride and prejudice’, appears three times in rapid succession, with the words ‘pride’ and ‘prejudice’ capitalised: ‘The whole of this unfortunate business, said Dr Lyster, has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. ![]() ![]() The phrase is found in two important works of the 1770s, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Originally titled First Impressions, the novel is, as its title makes clear, about the central characters’ need to overcome their pride (specifically, Mr Darcy’s haughtiness and snobbery) and their prejudice (specifically, Elizabeth Bennet’s inverted snobbery over Darcy’s upper-class aloofness).īut that title, Pride and Prejudice, was a cliché even when Austen used it for her novel. ![]()
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