Pemberley
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Pemberley is the name of the estate and country house owned by Fitzwilliam Darcy, the hero in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. It is located in Derbyshire and believed by some to be based on Chatsworth House, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire—and the exterior scenes at Pemberley for Joe Wright's 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, were in fact filmed at Chatsworth. However, Chatsworth was mentioned in the novel as one of the great houses Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle visited before Pemberley during their visit north, thus marking a distinction between Pemberley and it.
Lyme Park, near Stockport, was the setting for Pemberley for the television series of Pride and Prejudice (1995) starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
In describing the estate, Austen uses uncharacteristically explicit symbolism to represent the geographical home of the man at the centre of the novel. On first visiting the estate, Elizabeth Bennet is charmed by the beauty of the surrounding countryside, as indeed she is by Mr. Darcy himself. Elizabeth had already rejected Mr. Darcy's first proposal by the time she visits Pemberley - it is her visit to Pemberley that marks a change in her opinion of Mr. Darcy. She later describes a stream on the grounds whose "...natural importance was swelled into greater...", soon mirrored by a description of Mr. Darcy as having "a natural importance" that is "swelled" by his demeanour.
Pemberley Press is the name of the publishing house that Bridget Jones works at in the film Bridget Jones's Diary, in homage to Pride and Prejudice.
