Sense and Sensibility

The first of Jane Austen's novels to be published, Sense and Sensibility marked the debut of England's primary novelist of manners. Convinced that "3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work upon," Austen created a brilliant tragicomedy of flirtation and folly. Genteel dinner parties at a stately manor and romantic walks through luxuriant Devonshire draw two attractive sisters into the manipulations of landed gentry determined to marry well. But neither sense nor sensibility can guarantee happiness for either. The daughter of a clergyman and the seventh of eight children, Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775 at the village parsonage of Steventon in Hampshire, England. Like the five Bennett sisters in Pride and Prejudice, she spent her young womanhood among her family. Jane began to write early for her own and for her family's amusement, and struggled to be published -- as woman authors were not yet accepted. She was the first woman to be published under her own name. Her first real novel, Sense and Sensibility, was written before she was twenty, but was rejected by a publisher, revised several times and finally published when she was thirty-six. Pride and Prejudice, written at twenty-one under the title First Impressions was also rejected, rewritten, and finally published when Jane was thirtyeight. Two years later came the publication of Emma, often considered her finest novel. Three more novels, Northanger Abbey -- an early satire on the Gothic novel --Persuasion, and Mansfield Park, were not published until after her death. Living an uneventful life herself, Jane never married or ventured far from drawing rooms; she depicted the daily lives of provincial middle class families with a wry observation, a delicate irony, and good humored wit that have established her as a supreme exponent of the comedy of manners and one of the best known and best loved novelists of all time.