Reveling in 'Pride and Prejudice' at Free Library

Published 200 years ago in 1813, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice remains one of the best-read novels in the English language, with more than 20 million copies sold.

It's also the most filmed of the Austen novels, spawning 10 major films and TV miniseries, including the classic 1940 adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson with a script cowritten by no less a literary light than Aldous Huxley.

"Pride and Prejudice has never been out of print," says Kay Wisniewski, one of the organizers of the Free Library of Philadelphia's daylong literary celebration "Pride and Prejudice at 200" to be held Monday at the Central Library at 19th and Vine Streets.

Highlights include a rare-book exhibit, a roving theatrical performance by the Old Academy Players, a literary salon, and a film screening.

"Jane Austen has been a singularly inspiring writer to other writers," says Wisniewski, "and, of course, to readers."

Austen's influence can be felt in even the most hipster-centric corners of contemporary American letters, most singularly in Seth Grahame-Smith's 2009 spin-off, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Wisniewski, who heads the library's literature department, said Austen's was a dynamic vision, combining a cool intellect and sharp sense of irony with a "warm heart that worked toward the heroine's well-being."

Pride and Prejudice is told from the perspective of one of Austen's strongest narrators, the witty if sometimes unduly prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet.

Like most young women her age, Elizabeth is expected to be well-educated and cultivated in the arts, but only insomuch as it befits a respectable woman in society. Be too clever in Austen's world and you might be ostracized and without a husband.

Austen's hero, however, is far too intelligent for her own good. She bristles against social conventions, and although she maintains perfect decorum throughout, she always does so with a strong sense of irony.

It's in that spirit that she observes the absurdity of the social game her mother insists she and her four sisters play with deadly seriousness - finding a husband.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged," Austen's narrator says in the novel's opening line, "that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Elizabeth eventually finds herself ensnared in that very game, falling in love with the stupendously wealthy Mr. Darcy.

Monday's programs will include a presentation by film critic Carrie Rickey about three film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice: the 1940 version, a BBC miniseries from 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle, and Joe Wright's 2005 hit featuring Keira Knightley. The talk will be preceded by a screening of the Wright film.

"Many Jane-ites hate Hollywood versions of Pride and Prejudice because they think the filmmakers take liberties," says Rickey, a former Inquirer film critic. "My argument is that filmmakers are trying to make the book more cinematic."

She adds, "I'm immoderately fond of the 1940 version," acknowledging that it does take a great many liberties with the book.

Some of the movie adaptations overdo the romance and happy ending, says Wisniewski.

"Austen is a great proponent of . . . 'believable happiness,' " she says, citing a term coined by American author Amy Elizabeth Smith.

"Austen is a realist, a pragmatist. Her heroine's feet will always be on the ground even if her head is in the clouds."