Note: I disagree with Austen scholar Ellen Moody on her P&P chronology, which ignores the billeting of soldiers upon Meryton as a plot point dating the story, and disregards the modest but plainly stated age gap between Wickham and Darcy. I have my nitpicks with her S&S chronology as well (notably Edward’s age: how do you add nineteen to four and get twenty-five?) but I agree with her, for the purposes of this discussion, that the majority of the novel takes place from spring of 1797 to spring of 1798. Because of the varying ages of the major players in the story, their parents’ relationships probably took place at different times, and I will attempt to point out the respective timeframes as best I can.

Since casting for most of the major roles has been announced, with people I’ve barely heard of filling most of the roles, I decided to offer up a few under-informed opinions:

(Note: as previously established, I believe Pride and Prejudice takes place in 1793. Most of the couples in this section have children in the 27-30+ year old range by the time of P&P, so imagine these courtships as taking place around 1763 or somewhat earlier).

Welp, after that endless dissection last week of the Bennets, their backgrounds, economic situation, and parenting skills, loosely framing and providing context for some speculation about what they were like as a courting couple, I will probably have to cover every other set of parents introduced or mentioned in P&P to equal it in length. Here goes…

(Right now, I incline to the view that P&P must take place when billeting a company of soldiers or militia upon a town was still common practice, ie, before 1796, and the date of Mr. Collins’s initial visit to Longbourn – Monday, November 18 – implies that the story starts somewhere in autumn of 1793. When I talk about certain events happening 23-25 years before P&P, that means a timeframe around 1768-1770.)