Bookshelf · Classic LitPreview

Elizabeth Bennet.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

The original quick-witted reader. Lizzie’s library: novels her mother disapproves of, conduct manuals she ignores, and the letters that change everything.

"I am only resolved to act in that manner which will…"

3 booksCurated · cited · cross-referenced

The shelf, decoded

Why this list.

Elizabeth Bennet reads novels her father approves of, sermons her mother demands, and gothics her sister Lydia smuggles in. The list below is the actual Regency-period reading the Bennet sisters would have shared.

The reading list

3 books for Elizabeth.

No. 01Creator cited
Cecilia
Frances Burney
The Burney novel that gives Pride and Prejudice its title phrase.
CitationAuthor canon
No. 02Character fit
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
The gothic Lydia is reading in the corner. Lizzie has, of course, finished it.
CitationPeriod
No. 03On screen
Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women
James Fordyce
Mr. Collins reads aloud from this. The Bennet sisters do not listen.
CitationNovel, Chapter 14

Closing note

Read in any order. Lizzie did.

Jay Gatsby

Cover of Stoddard’s Lectures by John L. Stoddard

Cover of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Cover of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A library full of uncut pages. Gatsby owns the books he was never given the time — or class — to read. The list is a story of longing.

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The Catcher in the RyeSoon

Holden Caulfield

Cover of Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Cover of The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

Phonies on every shelf, but a few authors get a pass. Holden actually reads — Fitzgerald, Hardy, Isak Dinesen — between the cigarettes and the contempt.

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