Attribution

"I do not write for such dull Elves"

Jane Austen omits explicit identification of the speaker at other points in the novel. She herself commented on this in a letter concerning Pride and Prejudice: "a 'said he' or a ‘said she' would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear—but 'I do not write for such dull Elves'" (January 29, 1813). Her quotation alludes to a concluding passage from Sir Walter Scott's poem "Marmion": "I do not rhyme to that dull elf/Who cannot imagine to himself, ..."

— The Annotated Pride and Prejudice

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