June 4, 2018
Collagist Fabe adds flair to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with 39 original illustrations that accompany the unabridged text. Fabe’s collages overlay bright, watercolor-washed scenes with retro cut-paper figures and objects sampled from fashion magazines from the 1930s to the ’50s. Accompanying each tableau is a quote from the Pride and Prejudice passage that inspired it. Like Austen’s book, Fabe’s work explores arcane customs of beauty and courtship, pageantry and social artifice: in one collage, a housewife holds a tray of drinks while a man sits happily with a sandwich in hand in the distance. While tinged with irony and more than a dash of social commentary, the collages nevertheless have a spirit of glee and evidence deep reverence for the novel. As Fabe describes in a preface, Austen “was a little bit mean—the way real people are mean—so there are both heroes and nincompoops. Family is both beloved and annoying. That is Austen’s genius, her ability to describe people in all their frailty and humor.” This is a sweet and visually appealing homage.
January 1, 2025
Arguably Austen's most popular novel today, the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy has spun out endless adaptations, in print and on screen, and is the source of one of literature's most quoted lines: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." The very rich Mr. Darcy fails that supposition immediately. He is not searching for a wife and is in fact disdainful of most women and certainly of Elizabeth. This suits Elizabeth just fine, as the two are immediately at odds and remain so while their paths cross again and again. But underneath the simmering joint animosity is a growing attraction and slow path to, perhaps, mutual appreciation. Austen's wit and keen eye are on full display as she skewers the marriage market and writes about the perils women face as they try to navigate their futures in a world that offers few attractive options. The plot is brilliantly managed, as both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy circle each other within the smaller and larger circles of the society in which they engage, colliding in interesting ways that reveal much about themselves and their world. VERDICT Quick-moving, clever, and interrogative, Austen's popular love story, edited by the late literary scholar Kinsley and with a new introduction by Christina Lupton (English, Univ. of Warwick), is far more than a quest for a happily-ever-after.
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