Sense and Sensibility: Introduction by Peter Conrad [Hardcover]

In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love,Sense and Sensibilityis the answer to those who believe that Jane Austen’s novels, despite their perfection of form and tone, lack strong feeling.

Its two heroines, Marianne and Elinor—so utterly unlike each other–both undergo the most violent passions when they are separated from the men they love. What differentiates them, and gives this extraordinary book its complexity and brilliance, is thewayeach expresses her suffering: Marianne–young, impetuous, ardent–falls into paroxysms of grief when she is rejected by the dashing John Willoughby; while her sister, Elinor—wiser, more sensible, more self-controlled—masks her despair when it appears that Edward Ferrars is to marry the mean-spirited and cunning Lucy Steele. All, of course, ends happily—but not until Elinor’s “sense” and Marianne’s “sensibility” have equally worked to reveal the profound emotional life that runs beneath the surface of Austen’s immaculate and irresistible art.

“[Sense and Sensibility] is a subtler and a more searching novel than [its critics’] blunt instruments of perception have been capable of registering, because it deals not with the categories of romantic philosophy but with the transformation of those categories into ways of feeling and behaving. It explores the unsettling romantic alteration of the internal life.” –from the Introduction by Peter ConradThough the domain of Jane Austen’s novels was as circumscribed as her life, her caustic wit and keen observation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family’s entertainment. As a clergyman’s lcr