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Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

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.

“Miss Austen gives us all the agony of passion the human heart can feel; she was the first; and none has written the scene that we all desire to write as truthfully as she has;… it is here that we find the burning human heart in English prose narrative for the first, and, alas, for the last time.” -George Moore