Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen‘s first novel. From an early sketch entitled Elinor and Marianne, its a tale of two sisters with contrasting temperament. The novel was reworked twice in fourteen years before its publication in 1811.
Germaine Greer on why Jane Austen is good for us.
Snippets from the book published in Penguin Popular Classics 1994:
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and “setting one’s cap at man,” or “making a conquest,” are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and it their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.
She could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance.
A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.
I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances that are not really wanted.
If the loss of what is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your resolution, your self command, are perhaps a little less to be wondered at.
To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one; but to her reason, her judgement, it was completely a puzzle.