Book description
"The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I
shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
Jane Austen's novel tells the story of Marianne Dashwood, who wears
her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing
but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning
that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo.
Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling
to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to
her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened
loss - the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they
are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money
govern the rules of love.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of English literature's greatest
and most widely-read writers - one of the four 'great English
novelists' according to F. R. Leavis (along with George Eliot, Henry
James and Joseph Conrad). Her novels, both romantic fiction and
acerbic social commentary, include Pride & Prejudice,
Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion. Sense and Sensibility was the first of
Austen's novels to be published, in 1811, and she had to pay for its
publication and a commission on sales - until the tables turned upon
the book's great success and Austen began to make a substantial profit herself.
All six titles are published in the Penguin English Library.
