Editing Pride and Prejudice (section)

=== 19th century ===
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication.<ref name="Fergus" /> [[Anne Isabella Milbanke]], later to be the wife of [[Lord Byron]], called it "the fashionable novel".<ref name="Fergus" /> Noted critic and reviewer [[George Henry Lewes]] declared that he "would rather have written ''Pride and Prejudice'', or ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]'', than any of the [[Waverley Novels]]".<ref name="Southam">{{cite book |editor-last=Southam |editor-first=B.C. |title=Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |year=1995 |volume=1 |isbn=978-0-415-13456-9}}</ref>

Throughout the 19th century, not all reviews of the work were positive. [[Charlotte Brontë]], in a letter to Lewes, wrote that ''Pride and Prejudice'' was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but [...] no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck".<ref name="Southam" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Barker |first1=Juliet R. V.|author-link=Juliet Barker|title=The Brontës: A Life in Letters|location=London|publisher=[[Little, Brown Book Group|Little, Brown]]|year=2016 |edition=2016 |oclc=926822509 |isbn=978-1408708316}}</ref> Along with her, [[Mark Twain]] was overwhelmingly negative of the work. He stated, "Everytime I read ''Pride and Prejudice'' I want to dig [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."<ref>{{Cite web |title='Pride and Prejudice': What critics said
|url=https://www.janeaustensummer.org/post/pride-and-prejudice-what-critics-said |access-date=20 January 2024 |website=Jane Austen Summer Program|date=3 October 2018 }}</ref>

Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of ''Pride and Prejudice'' was excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade" and should have had a chapter "of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Buonaparté".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Claudia L. |author-link1=Claudia L. Johnson |title=Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel |date=1988 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=9780226401393 |page=73}}</ref>

[[Walter Scott]] wrote in his journal, "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of ''Pride and Prejudice''."<ref>{{cite book |title=The journal of Sir Walter Scott |last=Scott |first=Walter |date=1998 |publisher=Canongate |others=Anderson, W.E.K. |isbn=0862418283 |location=Edinburgh |oclc=40905767 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/journalofsirwalt0000scot_x1l6}}</ref>