BOOK 178: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY: JANE AUSTEN
Sense and Sensibility is a novel by
Jane Austen,
published in 1811. It was published anonymously; By A Lady appears on the cover
page where the author's name might have been. It tells the story of the
Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, both of age to marry.
The novel follows the young women
to their new home with their widowed mother, a meagre cottage on the property
of a distant relative, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. The
novel is set in southwest England, London
and Sussex
between 1792 and 1797.
The novel sold out its first print
run of 750 copies in the middle of 1813, marking a success for its author, who
then had a second print run later that year. The novel continued in publication
throughout the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Jane Austen wrote the first draft
of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form)
sometime around 1795 when she was about 19 years old, and gave it the title
Elinor and Marianne. She later changed the form to a narrative and the title to
Sense and Sensibility.
Austen drew inspiration for Sense
and Sensibility from other novels of the 1790s that treated similar themes,
including Adam Stevenson's "Life and Love" (1785) which he had
written about himself and a relationship that was not meant to be. Jane West's
A Gossip's Story (1796), which features one sister full of rational sense and
another sister of romantic, emotive sensibility, is considered to have been an
inspiration as well. West’s romantic sister-heroine also shares her first name,
Marianne, with Austen’s. There are further textual similarities, described in a
modern edition of West's novel.
The book has been adapted for film
and television a number of times, including a 1981 serial for TV directed by Rodney Bennett; a 1995 film adapted by Emma Thompson
and directed by Ang Lee; a version in Tamil
called Kandukondain Kandukondain, released in 2000, starring Ajith
Kumar (Edward Ferrars), Tabu (Elinor), Aishwarya Rai;
and a 2008 TV series on BBC adapted by Andrew Davies and directed by John Alexander.
