Back to the Classics Book Club: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

I started a new classics book club at my local library with my friend Barb. We meet quarterly and chose for our first book, a favorite of us both, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  Our meeting in April went very well with a lively discussion.  There were only four of us there – hopefully we will have more attendees at our next meeting next week.

To prepare for the meeting, I made a poster board with pictures of the different actors that played Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth to use during discussion. Barb and I put together an agenda and list of discussion questions beforehand.  We started with an icebreaker, a discussion of what was going on in history when Pride and Prejudice was published, a discussion of some of the customs of the day, and then went into questions.  We also had a quiz with a prize at the end – but we ran out of time. I also had brought a bag of my favorite Pride and Prejudice variations, modernizations, etc. to discuss, but we ran out of time for that as well.

I prepared by listening to the audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice that is narrated by Alison Larkin.  I have reviewed it before on my blog at this link.  I enjoyed listening to it again as usual.  Larkin has a delightful voice with a slight English accent and is a wonderful narrator. I also watched the 1995 miniseries with my eight year old daughter Penelope.  She ended up providing a question for discussion with her assessment of Mr. Wickham.  As he and Lydia drove away from Longbourn at the end, Penelope said, “He isn’t going to stayed married to Lydia.  He is just going to run away with another fifteen year old girl.”  I thought that was a pretty astute observation from an eight-year old girl!

Have you every hosted a book club where you discussed Pride and Prejudice?  How did it go and how did you plan your meeting?