Publisher's Synopsis

In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is 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 the way each 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.

About the Publisher

Everyman's Library

Everyman's Library was founded on 15th February 1906 with the publication by Joseph Dent (1849-1926) of fifty titles. Dent, a master bookbinder turned publisher, was a classic Victorian autodidact. The tenth child of a Darlington house-painter, he had left school at thirteen, and arrived in London with a half crown in his pocket. He promised to publish new and beautiful editions of the world's classics at one shilling a volume, 'to appeal to every kind of reader: the worker, the student, the cultured man, the child, the man and the woman' so that 'for a few shillings the reader may have a whole bookshelf of the immortals for five pounds (which will procure him a hundred volumes) a man may be intellectually rich for life'. 'Infinite riches in a little room', as he also put it.

Book information

ISBN: 9780679409878
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Imprint: Everyman's Library
Pub date:
DEWEY: 823.7
DEWEY edition: 20
Language: English
Number of pages: 367
Weight: 499g
Height: 210mm
Width: 133mm
Spine width: 27mm