Which Pride and Prejudice should you experience?
A family with five daughters and no son will lose its house when the father dies, so the mother wants the girls married. A rich young man rents the house nearby and brings a richer friend, who insults the second daughter at a dance. That is the start of the novel, and most people know how it ends.
It has since been an MGM comedy, two BBC serials, a 2005 film with Keira Knightley, a Bollywood musical, a hundred-episode YouTube diary, a zombie novel, a murder mystery, a housemaid’s novel, a gay beach comedy and a card game. None of them is the definitive one. Which one is right for you depends on what you want tonight.
Or browse every version
If quizzes aren’t your thing, browse instead: 35 versions across reading, watching, listening and playing.
Penguin Classics, ed. Vivien Jones (2002)
The whole novel, with an introduction by Vivien Jones and the original one by Tony Tanner.
The Oxford World’s Classics edition (2020)
The whole novel, a short introduction, and notes at the back for the words that have changed meaning.
The Norton Critical Edition, fourth edition
The 1813 text, with fifteen critical essays and two centuries of writers on Austen after it.
The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, ed. David M. Shapard
The novel with an annotation for nearly everything: money, carriages, manners, entails.
Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks
A large-format edition with notes in the margins and color pictures beside the text.
The Macmillan Collector’s Library edition, with Hugh Thomson’s drawings
A pocket hardback of the whole novel, with Hugh Thomson’s 1890s illustrations.
The Audible recording read by Rosamund Pike
The whole novel, read by Rosamund Pike, who played Jane Bennet in the 2005 film.
Manga Classics: Pride and Prejudice
The novel as a manga, adapted by Stacy King and drawn by Po Tse.
Marvel Illustrated: Pride and Prejudice
Marvel’s five-issue comic of the novel, collected in one book.
The L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording (1997)
A cast performs the story as a radio play, with Kate Burton and Miriam Margolyes.
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
MGM’s version, with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, co-written by Aldous Huxley.
Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1980)
Fay Weldon’s five-part BBC serial, with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul.
Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995)
Andrew Davies’s six-part series, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Joe Wright’s film, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, set in the 1790s.
Dario Marianelli’s score for Pride & Prejudice
The piano score from the 2005 film, played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
The film of the zombie mash-up, with Lily James as Elizabeth and Sam Riley as Darcy.
Lost in Austen (2008)
A modern Austen fan walks through her bathroom into the novel, and Elizabeth walks out.
Death Comes to Pemberley (BBC, 2013)
P. D. James’s murder mystery set six years after the wedding, with Matthew Rhys and Anna Maxwell Martin.
The Other Bennet Sister (BBC, 2026)
The BBC’s series about Mary, the middle Bennet sister, with Ella Bruccoleri.
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fielding, 1996)
A year of a thirty-something Londoner’s diary, with a man called Mark Darcy in it.
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Renée Zellweger as Bridget, and Colin Firth, six years after the BBC series, as Mark Darcy.
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003)
The novel as a college romantic comedy in Provo, Utah.
Bride and Prejudice (2004)
Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood-style musical, from Amritsar to Los Angeles.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012–2013)
The novel as a grad student’s video diary, on YouTube, in a hundred short episodes.
Eligible (Curtis Sittenfeld, 2016)
The Bennets in present-day Cincinnati, with Liz a magazine writer and Darcy a neurosurgeon.
Pride (Ibi Zoboi, 2018)
A young-adult remix set in a Brooklyn neighborhood that is changing fast, where the wealthy Darcy family moves in.
Ayesha at Last (Uzma Jalaluddin, 2018)
A retelling set among Muslim families in Toronto, where the judgmental one is engaged to her cousin.
Fire Island (2022)
Joel Kim Booster’s comedy about a group of gay friends on a week’s holiday in Fire Island Pines.
Austenland (2013)
Keri Russell as a woman obsessed with the 1995 Mr. Darcy, on holiday at a Regency theme resort.
Longbourn (Jo Baker, 2013)
The same years at the Bennets’ house, told by the housemaid who washes their clothes.
Death Comes to Pemberley (P. D. James, 2011)
P. D. James’s sequel: 1803, the night before the Pemberley ball, and Lydia says Wickham has been murdered.
The Other Bennet Sister (Janice Hadlow, 2020)
Mary Bennet’s own novel: the bookish middle sister, during the story and long after it.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Grahame-Smith, 2009)
Austen’s novel with a zombie plague written into it, most of her sentences left in place.
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) (Isobel McArthur, 2018)
The stage comedy in which five women, playing the servants, perform the whole story with karaoke.
Marrying Mr. Darcy (card game)
A card game for two to six players: court the gentlemen, then see who proposes.
Start with the novel itself
Which edition should you read? compares Penguin, Oxford, Norton, the two annotated editions, the Hugh Thomson illustrated hardback and Rosamund Pike’s recording. All of them are the complete novel; the difference is what comes with it.
Every version is the full list.