Read complete books and articles on: Sense and Sensibility

Austen, Jane - ôˈstən, 1775–1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at "Steventon," her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first novels, Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, were written, although they were not published until much later. On her father's retirement in 1801, the family moved to Bath for several years and then to Southampton, settling finally at Chawton Cottage, near Alton, Hampshire, which was Jane's home for the rest of her life.

Northanger Abbey, a satire on the Gothic romance, was sold to a publisher for £10 in 1803, but as it was not published, was bought back by members of the family and was finally issued posthumously. The novels published in Austen's lifetime were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). Persuasion was issued in 1818 with Northanger Abbey. The author's name did not appear on any of her title pages, and although her own friends knew of her authorship, she received little public recognition in her lifetime.

Jane Austen's novels are comedies of manners that depict the self-contained world of provincial ladies and gentlemen. Most of her works revolve around the delicate business of providing husbands for marriageable daughters. She is particularly noted for her vivid delineations and lively interplay of character, her superb sense of comic irony, and her moral firmness. She ridicules the silly, the affected, and the stupid, ranging in her satire from light portraiture in her early works to more scornful exposures in her later novels. Her writing was subjected to the most careful polishing. She was quite aware of her special excellences and limitations, comparing herself to a miniaturist. Today she is regarded as one of the great masters of the English novel. Her minor works include her Juvenilia, the novel Lady Susan, and the fragments The Watsons and Sanditon.

See her letters (ed. by R. W. Chapman, 2d ed. 1965); biographies by J. A. Hodge (1972), J. Halperin (1986), P. Honan (1988), V. G. Myer (1997), D. Nokes (1997), C. Tomalin (1997), and C. Shields (2001); studies by A. W. Litz (1965), F. W. Bradbook (1966), A. M. Duckworth (1971), K. Kroeber (1971), F. B. Pinion (1973), S. M. Tave (1973), and C. Johnson (1988).

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13 of the Best Books and Articles on: Sense and Sensibility

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Sense and Sensibility » Read Now
by Jane Austen, Robert William. 432 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
2.

Student Companion to Jane Austen (Chap. 3 "Sense and Sensibility (1811)") » Read Now
by Debra Teachman. 160 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Generations of readers and movie viewers have been drawn to the spirited heroines of Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Prepared especially for students, this full-length critical study of Jane Austen covers her six most beloved works, including the two novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published...
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Generations of readers and movie viewers have been drawn to the spirited heroines of Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Prepared especially for students, this full-length critical study of Jane Austen covers her six most beloved works, including the two novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published posthumously. Young readers will enjoy the vivid biographical account of how Austen herself was just a teenager when she took up the pen and began to write in guarded secrecy. Austen scholar Debra Teachman has a historian's eye for detail as she describes Austen's homelife in the English countryside and the social environment that were so much a part of Austen's stories. Teachman examines each novel, relating how historical context influenced the characters, events and themes that Austen developed. Teachman eloquently points out, for example, that while Austen does not overtly preach feminism in any of her novels, the lack of legal protection for women is a vital societal theme in Sense and Sensibility. Her discussion of the economic realities at the core of Austen's novels will help readers appreciate that works like the best-selling Pride and Prejudice are more than just charming stories.
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3.

A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (Chap. 1 "Sense and Sensibility: A Convergence of Readers/Viewers/Browsers," and Chap. 2 "A Critical History of Sense and Sensibility") » Read Now
by Robert Thomas Lambdin. 315 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Jane Austen significantly shaped the development of the English novel, and her works continue to be read widely today. In addition, her writings have attracted considerable critical and scholarly attention. This reference is a guide to her works and the response to them. Each of her major works is...
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Jane Austen significantly shaped the development of the English novel, and her works continue to be read widely today. In addition, her writings have attracted considerable critical and scholarly attention. This reference is a guide to her works and the response to them. Each of her major works is the subject of a reader-response oriented essay and a separate bibliographical survey. In addition, separate chapters overview her letters, poems, and prayers. Thus, the companion offers a convenient summary of scholarship on Austen and fresh readings of her works.
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4.

"He to Defend: I to Punish"; Silence and the Duel in Sense and Sensibility, in Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal » Read Now
by Vince Brewton. 11 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

The Sense and Sensibility of Betrayal: Discovering the Meaning of Treachery through Jane Austen, in Humanitas » Read Now
by Rodger L. Jackson. 18 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...The Sense and Sensibility of Betrayal: Discovering the Meaning...analysis. I have chosen Jane Austens Sense and Sensibility for examples of trust and betrayal...three...
6.

A Calendar for Sense and Sensibility, in Philological Quarterly » Read Now
by Ellen Moody. 34 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...A Calendar for Sense and Sensibility by ELLEN MOODY...explained the chronology of Sense and Sensibility. From Austens other five novels...Cassandra wrote that Austen began...
7.

Change and Fixity in Sense and Sensibility, in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 » Read Now
by Rodney S. Edgecombe. 18 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Change and Fixity in Sense and Sensibility by RODNEY S. EDGECOMBE In his introduction to Sense and Sensibility, Tony Tanner notes Marianne...Just such a window opens in...
8.

Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time (Chap. 3 "Sense and the Single Girl") » Read Now
by Mary Waldron. 194 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This book presents Jane Austen as a radical innovator. It explores the nature of her confrontation with the popular novelists of her time, and demonstrates how her challenge to them transformed fiction. Mary Waldron shows how Austen's novels exemplify the strong skepticism about contemporary notions...
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This book presents Jane Austen as a radical innovator. It explores the nature of her confrontation with the popular novelists of her time, and demonstrates how her challenge to them transformed fiction. Mary Waldron shows how Austen's novels exemplify the strong skepticism about contemporary notions of the proper content and purpose of fiction that is evident from family letters and other sources. In thus identifying her literary motivation, this book offers a fresh and unifying critique of the novels.
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9.

Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England (Chap. 3 "Sense and Sensibility") » Read Now
by Michael Giffin. 222 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's six published novels against the background of a 'long 18th century' that stretched from the Restoration to the Regency. He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and...
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Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's six published novels against the background of a 'long 18th century' that stretched from the Restoration to the Regency. He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. Giffin's focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation, and reflection on experience.
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10.

The Passion of Marianne Dashwood: Christian Rhetoric in Sense and Sensibility, in Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal » Read Now
by Anne Richards. 13 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library
11.

Of Woman Borne: Male Experience and Feminine Truth in Jane Austen's Novels, in Studies in the Novel » Read Now
by Sarah R. Morrison. 13 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...whether inclined to read Sense and Sensibility as Mariannes or as Elinors...But the male characters in Sense and Sensibility have not been singled out...Mariannes love for...
12.

Sense and Sensibility and Tintern Abbey: Growth and Maturation, in Wordsworth Circle » Read Now
by Beth Lau. 3 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

Jane Austen and the Riches of Embarrassment, in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 » Read Now
by David Southward. 22 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Mansfield Park, Edward Ferrars of Sense and Sensibility, and Captain Benwick of Persuasion...her into an averted glance (Sense and Sensibility, 1:46), or Fanny Prices...