About the Club

Once upon a time, in a country across the sea, a woman named Jane Austen wrote a book called Pride and Prejudice.  The book was well-beloved by many people and hundreds of copies were sold over the next century or so.

Fast-forward one hundred and eighty-three years.  Now it's 1995, and Andrew Davies' TV adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel is airing in six parts on the BBC.  The series wins awards all around and becomes a favorite with Janeites everywhere.

Jump ahead to the twenty-first century.  During the same year, at about the same time, two fourteen-year-old girls on opposite sides of the U.S. discover the world of Jane Austen—one starts with the 1995 Sense and Sensibility film and the other begins in the pages of Pride and Prejudice.  And all of a sudden, they're captivated.  Forever.  Each of them goes on to read all six of Jane Austen's major novels, and they both finish with Northanger Abbey in the summer of 2011.  They watch several movie adaptations and Miss Marianne begins a blog dedicated to Jane Austen and the Regency era, while Miss Dashwood introduces her younger sister to the world of the Bennets.  Both girls discover websites like the Republic of Pemberley and Jane Austen Today, realizing that there are actually other people in the world who love Jane Austen as much as they do.  And yet neither of these two girls knows yet that the other exists.

One last bit of time-travel, and we'll be done.  It's October 3rd, 2011, a pivotal day in history.  It's the day when Miss Marianne becomes the first follower on Miss Dashwood's brand-new blog, and a friendship is begun—a friendship that will grow by leaps and bounds, in which each girl discovers just what it means to have a kindred spirit.

The actual idea for the blog you are now reading began innocently enough, with a facetious remark Miss Dashwood made in her review of P&P95.  After saying that she thought Colin Firth didn't smile quite enough, she added quickly "Now before all you members of the P&P95Forever Club rise up in wrath and come at me with your DVDs at the ready, I have to point out that Mr. Darcy smiles in the original novel." Miss Marianne, meanwhile, while reading this with her usual amusement and agreement, was also thinking that it would be funny if there really was a P&P95Forever Club, but of course that had only been mentioned in jest. That was in late October 2011, when the two girls barely knew each other comparatively. But somewhere later along the way they decided to make the Club; neither remembers exactly how it happened... but happen it did.

Then, the years to come slowed the progress of the Club to a standstill until they finally decided to hand the reigns over to some other deserving young lady with a passion for P&P95.  You can read more about her on the About the Authors page.

The website was designed to provide fans with lots of information, easy to find, all in one place; and the general goal of the Club itself is to be a fun spot for the devoted fans of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice—those of us who know it's the best, and that there's a whole lot more to it than Colin Firth in a wet shirt—to gather together and ramble on about it to their hearts' content. If you would like to become a member and be listed on our membership roll, please visit the Members page.

Welcome to the Club!  We hope you enjoy your visit and return often.