Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre are the two novels most readers meet first in English fiction, and they are neighbours in almost nothing but the obvious: a plain heroine, a difficult man, a wedding at the end. Austen’s novel is conversation; Brontë’s is weather, interior monologue and a secret kept from the reader for a hundred pages.
The difference is narrative distance. Austen stays outside Elizabeth Bennet, reports what she says, and lets irony do the judging; there is no scene Elizabeth cannot be watched in. Jane Eyre tells her own life ten years after it happened, addresses the reader directly, and treats feeling as evidence. One book asks you to notice; the other asks you to agree.
Length explains part of the appeal. Pride and Prejudice can be finished in a long evening and a morning; Jane Eyre takes two or three, and spends its extra pages on childhood and on the years at Thornfield that the plot needs. If you want the social comedy of the 1810s, start with Austen. If you want a first-person voice with a temper, start with Brontë.
Side by side
Both editions are on this site, so the word counts and reading times are the numbers of the files you download. Screen versions are counted from the verified filmographies on the site; “none listed” means no version has been verified there yet, not that none exists.
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Eyre | |
|---|---|---|
| Published | 1813 | 1847 |
| Author | Jane Austen | Charlotte Brontë |
| Words here | 122,000 | 185,000 |
| Reading time | 7 h | 10 h |
| Screen versions | 4 | 6 |
| Free edition | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Eyre |
How to choose
- Read Pride and Prejudice first if you like dialogue, irony and a plot that turns on manners rather than events.
- Read Jane Eyre first if you want a narrator who argues with you, and a Gothic middle section rather than a drawing room.
- Both are complete, DRM-free editions here; the shorter one is the easier place to begin.
Questions readers ask
Which was written first?
Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, Jane Eyre in 1847 — thirty-four years apart, and the novel had changed a great deal in between.
Is Jane Eyre a romance or a Gothic novel?
Both, in sequence: the courtship runs through a house with a locked upper floor, and the answer to that floor is Gothic machinery in the middle of a realist novel.
Which is shorter?
Pride and Prejudice is about 122,000 words, roughly seven hours; Jane Eyre is about 185,000 words, roughly ten hours.
Both novels are in the complete catalogue. More head-to-head comparisons are in the comparison index, and word counts for everything are in the word-count table.