Jane Bennet - Title

Title

The title "Pride and Prejudice" is very likely taken from a passage in Fanny Burney's popular 1782 novel Cecilia, a novel Jane Austen is known to have admired:

"The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr. Lyster, "has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. ... Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination..."

The terms are also used repeatedly in Robert Bage's influential 1796 Hermsprong.

An earlier occurrence still is to be found in Chapter II of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published in 1776. In the discussion of slavery the following sentence appears: "Without destroying the distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honours was presented, even to those whom PRIDE AND PREJUDICE almost disdained to number among the human species".

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