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Pride and Prejudice, the park at Pemberley

Jane Austen published 1813 301 characters easy

The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent. Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view.

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About this text

Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813 with the London bookseller Thomas Egerton, who bought the copyright for 110 pounds. This description of the park opens the third volume, at the moment Elizabeth reaches Darcy’s estate. Austen wrote an early version in the 1790s under the title First Impressions. The complete novel is available on Project Gutenberg.

Where this text comes fromElizabeth has just arrived at the estate belonging to the man she refused, and Austen gives her a park to look at instead of a thought to have. The description is deliberately plain, almost surveyed rather than seen, and its flatness is the point: the reader is being made to wait. This passage opens the third volume, the structural hinge of the book. The Gutenberg text linked below is the one most reprints derive from, and it keeps the curly apostrophes of the original setting.

What you might not noticeThe park is introduced by size and by variety of ground before anything is said about the house. Austen withholds the building itself for several sentences, which is not how any other estate in her novels is introduced. Source

What it trainsNot one capital letter falls inside a sentence in this passage, which makes it the flattest of the four Austen fragments on this shelf for the left hand; the other three carry six, four and one. Three sentences, three commas, three full stops: the punctuation is as plain as the description. The single thing to watch is the apostrophe in Elizabeth’s, which this edition sets as a curly mark. The quote key in your home row makes it, and what you press is exactly what stands on screen. The longest word, conversation, is twelve letters.

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Read the full text at the publisher: Project Gutenberg

Cattle stand at a stream among trees, with a valley and distant hills in warm evening light, Landscape with Cattle, Thomas Gainsborough, 1773.
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Public domain status: published in 1813, more than 125 years ago. public domain, Project Gutenberg

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