Just read the last part before you watch episode 6, because it's just. I suggest you watch an episode, then read as far as the episode extends, then watch the next one, and so on. Seeing the 1995 BBC episode while I read was helpful. That worked for me when I struggled to wade through Austen's word flood. By the time you get to the sparring of Elizabeth and Darcy, you'll understand enough to enjoy it. '.that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Okay, that means a well-off single dude should get married! Now just untangle all the phrases this way and it'll work out. okay, so that means everyone knows it's the truth. 'It is a truth universally acknowledged'. I understood most of it the first time, but again, I'm weird. Try asking someone else to explain - or heck, use the Internet.īy the way, kudos to you! I also read Pride and Prejudice at twelve, just for fun! Then again, I'm a girl who reads Madeleine L'Engle and Rick Riordan all the time so I'm a bit unusual. I will definitely look out for more of their books after reading this one!

It’s published by Barrington Stoke, who I confess I had never heard of before but apparently they do a lot to make books accessible for dyslexics, among other things. Plus, the original will still be waiting for you when you’re done, and you’ll get the humour much quicker after reading this version. I would still recommend an e-book or a handy dictionary, but this won’t break the flow as often as with the original. So the story and the characters are unspoilt, the language is still a bit challenging to modern readers but in a much more manageable way. This fits perfectly with Lizzie’s character and her relationship with her father and, in any case, Jane Austen’s narrator was already ‘ channelling’ Lizzie. That first page, and first chapter, for example: she’s moved the complex opening line to a few paragraphs further, allowing Lizzy to say it in gentle mockery of her mother and in collusion with her father. Laura Wood has adapted Pride and Prejudice in a wonderful way: by reducing it to 100 pages and reordering a few lines here and there she has managed to produce a book that is a perfect stepping stone to the original and a great book in its own right! Sadie, I bear glad tidings of an event which is, unhappily, seven years too late for your thirteen-year-old self but most fortuitous for current and future readers in a similar predicament:

Pride and prejudice annotations