Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen's first published novel and, like Pride and Prejudice, the product of some fifteen years of careful revision. First drafted in 1795 under the title Elinor and Marianne, the manuscript was an epistolary work--a novel in the form of an exchange of letters--was read aloud for the entertainment of Austen's famfly. Several years later she redrafted the manuscript with a third-person narrative and issued the title that so succinctly expresses the opposing temperaments of its two heroines: Sense and Sensibility.

Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen"s first published novel and, like Pride and Prejudice, the product of some fifteen years of careful revision. First drafted in 1795 under the title Elinor and Marianne, the manuscript was an epistolary work--a novel in the form of an exchange of letters--was read aloud for the entertainment of Austen"s famfly. Several years later she redrafted the manuscript with a third-person narrative and issued the title that so succinctly expresses the opposing temperaments of its two heroines: Sense and Sensibility.

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY OF JANE AUSTEN"S LIvE

AND WORK

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF Sense and Sensibility

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

NOTES

INTERPRETIVE NOTES

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INTERESTED READER