ABSTRACT
The Early Critical Reception of the novel came in both published reviews and private letters and diaries. Lord Byron’s future wife Annabella Milbanke thought Pride and Prejudice ‘the most probable fiction I have ever read’ (see p. 56), though the anonymous reviewer in the British Critic (like many subsequent critics) pointed to inconsistencies in the character of Darcy, whose ‘easy unconcern and fashionable indifference, somewhat abruptly changes to the ardent lover’ (see p. 55). Henry Crabb Robinson recommended the novel for ‘the perfectly colloquial style of the dialogue’ (see p. 57), but Jane Davy snobbishly disapproved because its ‘picture of vulgar minds and manners [. . .] is unrelieved by the agreeable contrast of more dignified and refined characters’ (see p. 57). The Critical Review was decidedly impressed: Pride and Prejudice, it concluded, ‘rises very superior to any novel we have lately met with in the delineation of domestic scenes’ (see p. 56).
