'Pride and Prejudice'

'Pride and Prejudice'

How ironic that Lydia in Pride and Prejudice declares: “Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three and twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three and twenty!” If Harris Bigg-Wither ever read her novels, he would have been quite struck by these words. Miss Austen had never written so honestly! Or ironically…

Beau-Brummel-Dighton

That isn't Harris Bigg-Wither. But if he had been anything like Mr. Darcy he would have looked like this. It's a Portrait of Beau Brummel, the most fashionable man of the age, a caricature by Robert Dighton in 1805. Love the hair.

C.E. Brock: illustration for an 1895 edition of the novel