Thomas Langlois Lefroy
In 1796, Lefroy began a flirtation with English novelist Jane Austen, who was a friend of an older female relative. Jane Austen wrote two letters to her sister Cassandra mentioning "Tom Lefroy", and some have suggested that it may have been he whom Austen had in mind when she invented the character of Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice", as the courtship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen took place over the year or so that "Pride and Prejudice" was written. In his 2003 biography, "Becoming Jane Austen", Jon Spence suggests that Jane Austen actually used her and Tom LeFroy's personalities as the models for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, but not in an expected way. Spence suggests that Jane Austen used Tom Lefroy's more gregarious personality as the model for the novel's heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and her own measured demeanor was used as the model for the male protagonist, Mr. Darcy. So while the exact influence of Tom Lefroy on "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be debated, it does seem certain that his presence in Austen's life is in some way reflected in the novel.
Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV series)
As one of the BBC's and A&E's most popular presentations ever, the serial was "a cultural phenomenon, inspiring hundreds of newspaper articles and making the novel a commuter favourite". With the 1995 and 1996 films "Persuasion", "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma", the serial was part of a wave of Jane Austen enthusiasm which caused the membership of the Jane Austen Society of North America to jump fifty percent in 1996 and to over 4,000 members in the autumn of 1997. Some newspapers like "The Wall Street Journal" explained this "Austen-mania" as a commercial move of the television and film industry, whereas others attributed Austen's popularity to escapism.