Sense and Sensibility
By Jane Austen
“I suspect,” said Elinor, “that to avoid one kind of affectation, Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people pretend to have more admiration for the beauties of nature than they feel and are disgusted with such pretensions, he causes greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own.”
“It is very true,” said Marianne, “that admiration of landscape scenery has become mere jargon. Everybody pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.”
“I am convinced,” said Edward, “that you feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I wouldn’t say I like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I greatly admire them if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I wouldn’t say I like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower—and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the world.”
Genre: Fiction And Literature | Romance Books
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Jane Austen
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.
Biography.
Austen’s plots often explore women’s dependence on marriage to pursue favourable social standing and economic security. Her works implicitly critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism, and biting irony has earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
The anonymously published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816) were a modest success but brought her little fame in her lifetime. She wrote two other novels—Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1817—and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan and the unfinished novel The Watsons.
Since her death, Austen’s novels have rarely been out of print. A significant transition in her reputation occurred in 1833 when they were republished in Richard Bentley’s Standard Novels series (illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering and sold as a set). They gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew’s publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience. Her work has inspired many critical essays and has been included in many literary anthologies. Her novels have also inspired many films, including 1940’s Pride and Prejudice, 1995’s Sense and Sensibility and 2016’s Love & Friendship.
Published author
Like many women authors at the time, Austen published her books anonymously. At the time, the ideal roles for a woman were as wife and mother, and writing for women was regarded at best as a secondary form of activity; a woman who wished to be a full-time writer was felt to be degrading her femininity, so books by women were usually published anonymously to maintain the conceit that the female writer was only publishing as a sort of part-time job, and was not seeking to become a “literary lioness”.
During her time at Chawton, Austen published four generally well-received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which, like all of Austen’s novels except Pride and Prejudice, was published “on commission”, that is, at the author’s financial risk. When publishing on commission, publishers would advance the publication costs, repay themselves as books were sold and then charge a 10% commission for each book sold, paying the rest to the author. If a novel did not recover its costs through sales, the author was responsible for them. The alternative to selling via commission was selling the copyright, where an author received a one-time payment from the publisher for the manuscript, which occurred with Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s experience with Susan (the manuscript that became Northanger Abbey) where she sold the copyright to the publisher Crosby & Sons for £10, who did not publish the book, forcing her to buy back the copyright to get her work published, left Austen leery of this method of publishing. The final alternative, selling by subscription, where a group of people would agree to buy a book in advance, was not an option for Austen as only authors who were well known or had an influential aristocratic patron who would recommend an upcoming book to their friends could sell by subscription.[104] Sense and Sensibility appeared in October 1811 and was described as being written “By a Lady”. As it was sold on commission, Egerton used expensive paper and set the price at 15 shillings (equivalent to £58 in 2021)
Early manuscripts (1796–1798)
After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began her first full-length novel, Elinor and Marianne. Her sister remembered that it was read to the family “before 1796” and told through a series of letters. Without surviving original manuscripts, it is impossible to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel published anonymously in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility.
Austen began a second novel, First Impressions (later published as Pride and Prejudice), in 1796. She completed the initial draft in August 1797, aged 21; as with all of her novels, Austen read the work aloud to her family as she worked on it, and it became an “established favourite”. At this time, her father first attempted to publish one of her novels. In November 1797, George Austen wrote to Thomas Cadell, an established publisher in London, to ask if he would consider publishing First Impressions. Cadell returned Mr. Austen’s letter, marking it “Declined by Return of Post”. Austen may not have known of her father’s efforts. Following the completion of First Impressions, Austen returned to Elinor and Marianne and revised it heavily from November 1797 until mid-1798; she eliminated the epistolary format in favour of third-person narration and produced something close to Sense and Sensibility. In 1797, Austen met her cousin (and future sister-in-law), Eliza de Feuillide, a French aristocrat whose first husband, the Comte de Feuillide, had been guillotined, causing her to flee to Britain, where she married Henry Austen. The description of the execution of the Comte de Feuillide related to his widow left Austen with an intense horror of the French Revolution that lasted for the rest of her life.
During the middle of 1798, after finishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third novel with the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the famous Gothic novel. Austen completed her work about a year later. In early 1803, Henry Austen offered Susan to London publisher Benjamin Crosby, who paid £10 for the copyright. Crosby promised early publication and went so far as to advertise the book publicly as being “in the press” but did nothing more. The manuscript remained unpublished in Crosby’s hands until Austen repurchased his copyright in 1816.
Jane Austen
