Road trip reading is not restricted to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or Fanny Trollope’s Domestic Habits of Americans.
I prefer Jane Austen. And I always take a rather scruffy paperback.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman on a road trip needs an inexpensive, even disposable, paperback that will fit in a purse, backpack, or bike pannier. She needs to leave the “nice” editions on the shelves, because road copies get smudged and dog-eared.
Jane Austen’s novels are not travel books, but all the heroines except Emma travel. They ride in carriages and other quaint 19th-century vehicles to London, Bath, Derbyshire, villages, and huge country houses.
In Persuasion, Austen’s sexiest book, Anne Elliot, the unmarried heroine, is constantly traveling. She blooms on a visit to her sister Mary in the village of Kellynch. Later, when Anne joins her spendthrift father and pompous older sister in Bath, a romantic spark is reignited between Anne and Captain Wentworth, who were in love seven years ago.
One of the more attractive cheap editions is the Modern Library Torchbearers paperback above ($7.00). The introduction is by Uzma Jalzluddin, and more important, it has an attractive cover!
You should also check out the cheap Bantams and Signet editions of Persuasion in the $5 – $6 price range.
2 Pride and Prejudice. The Bantam mass market paperback ($5.95) is plain but sturdy. It lacks an introduction and notes, but who needs them on a road trip?
The mass market Signet paperback of P&P ($5.35) is comparable, but it has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Eloise Janes.
3 Emma. A 2001 Modern Library paperback ($9) strays from Modern Library’s drab trademark brown cover by substituting a flashy orange cover with a charming illustration by Jillian Ditner. It also has an introduction by A. Walton Litz, notes, and a reading guide.
The Signet edition ($5.41) has an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an Afterword by Sabrina Jeffries.
The Bantam edition ($4.65) has no frills, but does the job.
4 Mansfield Park. The Wordsworth edition ($3.95) is the cheapest. This budget publisher always provides an introduction and notes.
If you want to pay a few dollars more, the Penguin edition ($7.95) has an introduction by Kathryn Sutherland and notes.
5 Sense and Sensibility, I broke the paperback rule when I discovered the Puffin in Bloom hardback edition ($11) of Sense and Sensibility. This is smaller than most paperbacks. No frills – no introduction or notes – but it survived the trip, and it is now one of my prized go-to editions.
6 Northanger Abbey. The Dover Thrift edition seems to be out-of-print, but you can buy used editions online for $5 and up.
