Watch: New Audible Interview with Rosamund Pike inside the studio as she reads Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice!

Available now on Audible is Audible Studios newest unabridged audiobook release of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice as read/narrated by Pride & Prejudice (2005) film's very own Rosamund Pike (aka Jane Bennet, the eldest Bennet sister). Hear a First Listen: A clip of Rosamund Pike reading Chapter 3 of Pride and Prejudice! which was released through People.com.

You can download the Pride and Prejudice Unabridged audiobook here.

Watch Rosamund's Audible interview as well as read her new Glamour interview below...

Actress Rosamund Pike takes you inside the studio of 'Pride and Prejudice.' #NowOnAudible https://t.co/tzZJErl4QU https://t.co/uDqijZxFvh

— Audible (@audible_com) December 8, 2015

Or watch in the Audible YT video below...

Rosamund Pike perfoms #PrideandPrejudice with a @jessicahische cover design that #Janeites will love! #NowOnAudible pic.twitter.com/K5t0moQYVt

— Audible (@audible_com) December 8, 2015

 New Rosamund Pike Pride and Prejudice 

Audiobook promo photos (via Audible)

Official Press Release (via The Pewter Wolf):

ROSAMUND PIKE PERFORMS JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE FOR AUDIBLE
NEW RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT AUDIBLE.CO.UK

London – 8 December, 2015 Audible Studios, a production arm of Audible, today announced the release of Rosamund Pike’s narration of Jane Austen’s beloved classic,Pride and Prejudice. This memorable performance by the Academy Award-nominated star of Gone Girl is now available for download at audible.co.uk/prideandprejudice.

“Pride and Prejudice will always resonate with people because Austen is dealing with a theme that is so universal: falling in love for the first time,” said Pike, whose artistic relationship with the novel dates back to the 2005 film adaptation, in which she played Jane Bennet. “I hope people enjoy what I’ve done with it, and find my characterizations convincing. While narrating this, I was constantly listening, and making recordings of people’s voices which I thought might have some qualities useful for a character – whether it be the person’s tone, intonation, pitch, or cadence of speech. Performing this audiobook has been extremely rewarding for me. It’s made me think afresh about familiar things, and made me again appreciate what a great heroine Austen has given us in Elizabeth Bennet.”

“Pride and Prejudice still captivates modern readers and listeners, and this new recording, makes it easy to see why,” said Audible UK Content Director Laurence Howell. “Austen’s timeless story of romance, family and social dynamics combined with Rosamund Pike’s beautiful performance make this a must-have for devotees of Austen’s novel, and it is a wonderful introduction to the book for a new generation of Austen fans.”

In addition to Pike, among the acclaimed performers who have narrated works of literature for Audible are Aiden Gillen, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kate Winslet, Jesse Eisenberg, and Aidan Gillan. In 2013, Audible Studios won its first Grammy Award, for its production of Janis Ian’s memoir Society’s Child, and also won the Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year, for Colin Firth’s performance of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.

Audible, the world’s largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word content, invented and commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, and has since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. In 2014, listeners around the world downloaded 1.2 billion hours of audio from Audible outlets; Audible members downloaded an average of more than 17 books over the course of the year. Two thirds of new Audible members are first-time audiobook buyers.

ABOUT AUDIBLE, LTD Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible’s mission is to establish literate listening as a core tool for anyone seeking to be more productive, better informed, or more thoughtfully entertained. Audible content includes more than 150,000 audio programmes from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is also the preeminent provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes Store.

Also, Rosamund has a new P&P movie/book related interview via Glamour.com to promote the new Audible Pride and Prejudice Unabridged Audiobook released today.

Here are parts of her Glamour interview here (Note: I've edited the few errors from the article text that misspelled the Bennet family's name. There's only one "T"! Tom Hollander (not Oliver) and Matthew Macfadyen (not Rhys, as in the other Matthew...Matthew Rhys aka Death Comes to Pemberley's Mr. Darcy and Keira's The Edge of Love co-star) and Keira (not Kiera)...

Rosamund Pike on Why Pride and Prejudice Holds Up Over 200 Years Later: We Still Need Elizabeth Bennet

Why do you think Pride and Prejudice has been able to stand the test of time?
RP: I think any good writing, to be honest, stands the test of time. Any good writer who invites you into a world with detail and total commitment is going to hold your attention. It's a cliche to say Lizzie was ahead of her time, she wasn’t, she was clearly a girl of her time or Jane Austen wouldn’t have written her. There were clearly people who thought like that, just as actually now Lizzie is a girl ahead of her time. I mean look, even now, women all over the place are trying to conform still and behave in a way they feel they ought to and make themselves a model of what they imagine a man might like. And we’d all be better off if we were able to take some of Elizabeth Bennet’s independence and spiritedness—and her dislike of flattery and game playing. You know, she’s a free-thinker. And again, I think it’s probably the reason [the book] still appeals because we, as women, haven’t crossed that boundary yet. We still need her. She will cease being modern when we don’t need her anymore to remind us of the way to go.

If Pride and Prejudice were remade today in a modern adaptation, how do you think the story would hold up?
RP: I don’t think it needs to be updated into a modern thing. You could certainly create characters like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, for sure. It wouldn’t be Pride and Prejudice because a certain amount of the economic issues of the book are not relevant in the same way today, and women no longer need a husband in order to leave the family home. And the views on marriage and the attitudes toward marriage are so different—though, you know, love is the same as it ever was. Charlotte Lucas is always an interesting figure because she says she wants a husband for different reasons. She wants a husband to gain independence and run a household—she says she can’t afford to be romantic. Which is admirable, in its way, even though we might not like her choice of husband in Mr. Collins. But the idea of an Elizabeth and Darcy couple nowadays would be…it is always going to work because as long as you deal in a very specific way with those very issues of Pride and Prejudice—you know—pride is a huge thing and, of course, Elizabeth takes immediate dislike to [Mr. Darcy], so she thinks, because of his pomposity and for his pridefulness. So certainly, if you just went with that [couple dynamic] and didn’t try and mimic all the other themes of the book, then yes.

What drew you to doing the audiobook version?
RP: The offer [to do an audiobook] always comes mixed with a little bit of dread because I knew it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I also knew it was something I didn’t really have time to do—and it’s obviously such a lovely thing to do, but the way I like to do audiobooks, you just know what a colossal amount of work it is because of having to create a voice for all these different characters, find out who all those people are, and especially in the case of Pride and Prejudice, differentiate between so many women. So, that was the side of the decision that was both daunting but also a fait accompli as soon as I got the offer. But the other reason I’m drawn to audiobooks is that when I was a child I used to go on many long car journeys with my father, who was a singer and would perform in Europe a lot…and he and I would go together and we would always listen to audiobooks. I feel that a lot of my reading has been done through listening to books because I really believe that in listening to a book, it goes into your brain and your imagination in the same way as it does when you’re reading it. It’s not like watching a film—you’re hearing all the words, and they’re imprinting on your brain. I even love to listen to audiobooks when I run. Everybody always thinks that you have to listen to music while you run, otherwise you won’t be motivated. But I tell you there’s nothing like being completely distracted by a really good story to take your mind off the pain.

So how did you prepare for the audiobook?
RP: Audiobooks do require a lot of preparation because you have to know the book well, but also you have to get comfortable with the sentence structure of the author that you’re reading. You have to make it feel like the narration is coming out spontaneously, and is as natural as the prose can be, and also that the dialogue is as natural and as realistic and as spontaneous…I mean, that’s the aim. You’ll have to decide whether I’ve achieved it or not. So with Jane Austen, her prose is not the way we speak today, but it’s very beautiful and elegant and the thoughts are longer than the thoughts that we allow ourselves to express in a single sentence today. So you have to re-gear your brain to holding a thought over many more words and longer sentences. In order to do that, you often, when you have the script in front of you, you actually have to make a form of notation that you will understand to sort of guide—by means of arrows or highlights or however you want to do it—where the thought is going and what the main object of the sentence is. So, I have a sort of system of scrawls and strange notations that only I would understand but which—it’s a musical language to me, I suppose. It’s like a form of notation that only I can understand. Then I go around "song-catching," so I can be anywhere—and the brilliant thing about an iPhone (all this free advertising for the iPhone)—is that you can be anywhere and be incredibly discreet about recording someone because it doesn’t look like you’re bringing out a recording device. So it could be that a particular taxi driver or someone I’m sitting behind on a means of public transport, an air stewardess or anybody—someone I’m working with—will have a voice or a quality of voice that I want to remember because I think it could be useful for a character. So I look for voices—and that’s what takes the great deal of work. But I mean, that’s the way I like to do it, and I think it’s probably inspired by the readers that I liked listening to when I was a child. I particularly remember David Suchet reading—all his voices were brilliant.

You've played Jane Bennet before. What similarities do you have to her character—and what differences?
RP: [Laughing] I’m not really anything like Jane Bennett, who is incredibly sweet-natured, good, and naive, yes. I mean, it’s always really nice to be seen like that. But I think innately I’m a lot more mischievous and sarcastic and sort of more badly behaved than Jane, I suppose. But that’s the beauty of acting—it’s the suspension of disbelief. When you’re playing a character, a little bit of their good soul rubs off on you for the time that you’re playing [her] and so…it’s nice. Other people have criticized Jane and said she’s boring, and I never saw her like that. I just see her as someone who has made a very wise choice to go through life looking for the best in people and ignoring the worst. There’s a lot to recommend in that strategy. She just always looks for what’s sweet and good. And it’s not that she doesn’t or couldn’t see other things, it’s just that she finds that that’s too disturbing of her own peace—to look for the negative. Whereas her sister, obviously, Lizzie, is you know, quite quick to prejudice and critiquing people.

What are some favorite memories and moments from filming Pride and Prejudice?
RP: Everything. It was a ball. Our wrap party on the grounds of Chatsworth House in a big tent, singing “Yellow Submarine” at the tops of our voices on a bus—the whole crew—going to the wrap party, that was a big memory, finding a lake after filming one night and everyone going skinny dipping, having midnight picnics. I mean, it was an idyll—romantic and magical. I think the atmosphere of the story caught up with everybody, and it was...you always know that when you look round a crew and everyone’s wearing floral dresses and scarfs. I went straight from there to film a military film and all the crew dressed in combats—you sort of take on a bit of an air sometimes, of the story you’re telling without…it’s subconscious. I’m doing a 40s film now, and I think it makes everyone have a yearning to wear hats and wear red lipstick.

What scenes (from the book or film) stand out the most to you?
RP: I think most of the dialogue scenes are brilliant. The whole section when Mr. Collins first comes to the house is brilliantly described in the book, and I think we did a really good job of that scene in the film because Tom Oliver Hollander was so brilliant and obsequious and clever with his obsequiousness in the film. When Darcy first makes his feelings for Elizabeth known, and she finds herself taking offense because of the way he expresses his feelings…he says that he has “battled with his better judgement and can battle no further” and realizes he’s in love with her…and she’s so offended by the fact that he even had to…that he was trying not to give sway to those feelings. And when we did the film, Kiera Keira [Knightley] and Matthew [Rhys] [Macfadyen], they filmed [that scene] in the rain, and I think the driving rain and the miscommunication and the sort of atmosphere of that was very well captured. And I mean, I personally, loved the Bingley-Jane proposal scene in the film because obviously Jane is someone who doesn’t express her feelings, and she doesn’t have Elizabeth’s kind of, vent, or ability to vent her emotions or say what she’s feeling. She’s obviously feeling a lot more than she expresses. So, we don’t know how much she’s been holding in until the proposal comes and she bursts into tears. I think that scene is very touching in the book.

Read the full Rosamund Pike's Glamour Interview here.