P&P, Vanity Fair edition

When Pride and Prejudice was published in early 1813, Jane Austen had a few regrets. “It wants shade,” she wrote to her sister, Cassandra. “It wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter—of sense if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense—about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte.”*

You will notice Austen did not suggest that what her novel really needed was perfume ads.

So we’ll just have to imagine what she would have made of a peculiar Austen-themed project that launches today: “Pride and Prejudice: A Novel Magazine.”

It’s all in the title: This is an unabridged edition of Pride and Prejudice, formatted to resemble a glossy periodical in the Vanity Fair mold—or, actually, three glossy periodicals, replicating the three volumes in which the novel was originally published. Interspersed among pages of Jane Austen’s text are AI-generated photo spreads on Regency themes, viewed through the lens of twenty-first-century luxury aesthetics.

Willowy models gaze out blankly from underneath extravagant bonnets, or pose in Empire-waist gowns while seated in luxurious Georgian drawing rooms. Elegant accessories—a reticule, a fan--are set against elaborate backdrops, or no backdrops at all. Also, there are perfume ads.

According to a press release from the project’s creator, Simon King--a Londoner who once created a line of sustainable denim streetwear and now calls himself a “creative strategist" and "brand architect”--the novel magazine “provides a new point of entry for readers who find classic fiction intimidating, opening up canonical works to more visual, culturally fluent audiences.”

King is apparently a Pride and Prejudice superfan: Each year, he says, he rereads the novel and rewatches the iconic 1995 BBC adaptation. But he’s not exactly a Janeite: “It’s not Jane Austen’s entire repertoire that captivates me, but rather this singular, perfect love story,” he explains in a “Curator’s Letter” at the outset of the novel magazine’s Volume I.

I’ll give King this: He’s done some interesting homework, if the QR-coded information on his photo pages is to be trusted. Spreads featuring jewelry, gowns, and bonnets link back to shops advertised in newspapers published during Austen’s era; announcements of theatrical productions feature real-life Regency actors. “It’s about exploring connections and imagining the influences that surrounded Austen,” King argues on the project website.

Some of the visuals are striking, albeit in the slightly creepy, soulless mode of so much AI art, but as King freely admits, none are intended to mimic the aesthetics of Austen’s era. “This is not about accuracy,” he writes on the website. “It is about atmosphere. Not a re-enactment, but a reawakening.”

The novel magazine's faux Sense and Sensibility advertisement

To me, the atmosphere in question—particularly the worship of luxury, the obsession with surface appearances, and the Gothic overtones of some of the visuals --seems flamboyantly unlike Austen, or at least unlike the Austen of the novels, as opposed to (some of) the movies. (I giggled—which I’m not sure was the intended effect--at the Sense and Sensibility advertisement featuring a photo of three delicate beauties awash in pre-Raphaelite hair, along with copy apparently written by Marianne Dashwood on an especially bad day: “Three Sisters. Forced from their home. At the mercy of distant relations. A Tale of Romance, Deep Love and Unbearable Heartbreak.”)

The P&P novel magazine is planned as the first in a series based on classic (i.e., out of copyright) fiction, though King’s publicity materials don’t mention any future titles. Perhaps he’s waiting to see how many people are willing to pony up £19.95 (about $27) for each of the three volumes, £49.95 ($67) for a set of all three, or £79.95 ($107) for a bound volume called The Pemberley Edition.

Will there be many such people? I have trouble imagining there will be. It’s not clear to me why someone intimidated by Austen’s prose would find said prose easier to take if the facing page displayed a fake ad for Regency real estate. Nor do I understand how professedly ahistorical renditions of Austen's historical context enrich our understanding of her influences.

But, then, what do I know? I’m no brand architect.

* Letter #80 (February 4, 1813) in Deirdre Le Faye’s standard edition of Austen’s correspondence.