Jane Austen: Complete Novels

By Jane Austen and Katie Halsey

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was a major English novelist whose classic works of romantic fiction, notable for their wit, keen social observations and insight into the lives of early nineteenth-century women, remain widely read and loved today. This complete collection of her seven great novels – ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Mansfield Park’, ‘Emma’, ‘Northanger Abbey’, ‘Persuasion’ and ‘Lady Susan’ – presented in a single volume is an essential edition for collectors, students and general lovers of Jane Austen alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780857285829

Jane Austen

Born December 16, 1775, Jane Austen is one of the most celebrated authors of the English language. Her fiction is known for its witty satires on English society. Austen wrote anonymously during her life and wasn't widely recognized as a great English writer until after her death in 1817.

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Contents

Introduction

Sense and Sensibility

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Pride and Prejudice

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Mansfield Park

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Emma

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Northanger Abbey

Volume I

Volume II

Persuasion

Volume I

Volume II

Lady Susan

About

ANTHEM CLASSICS

ANTHEM CLASSICS is our continuous publishing programme dedicated to the vast and important field of classic literature, comprising some of the most significant works from across the world’s literatures and genres. Books in this series remain faithful to the original works, drawing texts from authoritative editions and applying an intelligent editorial hand. The classic texts are enhanced with a full critical apparatus, with comprehensive introductions, clear annotations, helpful glossaries and chronologies, and purposeful bibliographies, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

This exciting programme includes ANTHEM CLASSICS DELUXE EDITIONS, which feature striking collections of selected works by our greatest and best-loved writers. These enriching volumes are introduced with fascinating new essays by leading scholars and adorned with beautifully designed covers.

JANE AUSTEN

Complete Novels

With an Introduction by

Katie Halsey

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2014

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Introduction copyright © Katie Halsey 2014

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INTRODUCTION

Jane Austen was born in 1775, the year the American colonies began their fight for independence, and she died in 1817, two years after the Battle of Waterloo brought the Napoleonic Wars in Europe to a decisive end. She herself lived most of her life in the peace and tranquillity of rural Hampshire as the daughter of a country clergyman, but two of her brothers were sailors fighting in the British Navy, and her cousin’s husband was guillotined during the French Revolution. Yet, as Tony Tanner ironically points out, when discussing Pride and Prejudice, during a decade in which Napoleon was effectively engaging, if not transforming, Europe, Jane Austen composed a novel in which the most important events are that a man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind.¹ And Jane Austen herself stressed the fact that she did not write about historical or political events, telling the Prince Regent’s librarian, who had urged her to write a history of the German ducal House of Saxe-Coburg, that she preferred her own pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages, and claiming (humorously) to be the most unlearned and uninformed Female who ever dared to be an Authoress.²

It is true that the central dramas of Jane Austen’s novels are personal, rather than political, and many literary critics have attributed the novels’ success to the timeless or universal quality of her characters and plots. Austen’s detractors, on the other hand, tend to suggest that the novels are too limited in their scope, ignoring world events in favour of a claustrophobic focus on relationships and family dynamics. While Austen herself did tell her niece that 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on,³ and she tended to follow her own advice, the three or four families on whom Austen’s novels focus are nonetheless embedded in the wider cultural, social and political events of Jane Austen’s times. The novels refer to such events, even while they do not comment explicitly on them. Jane Austen wrote about what she knew, which was gentry-class society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and her novels reflect the preoccupations of that society. Austen frequently alludes casually to books, people, places and historical events, making the assumption that her readers will know what she means without having it spelled out for them. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, soldiers of the militia are quartered at Meryton, the town closest to the heroine’s home. Why else would they be there, if Britain were not at war? In Persuasion, the naval hero makes his fortune because of the opportunities for financial reward offered by the war at sea, and Austen dates Persuasion with absolute precision (the novel begins in the summer of 1814; Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth first meet in 1806, after which Wentworth goes to sea) so that the readers of her own time would have been able to reconstruct the real battles in which he fought. In Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram leaves his home to settle some difficulties on his estates in Antigua, a reference to the declining profitability of the sugar trade during the wars with France and America. Contemporary references to political and historical events in fact abound in the novels, but they are treated with a lightness of touch that sometimes renders them invisible.

This is largely because such details tend to work seamlessly in the service of either plot or character development in Austen’s novels. It is, for example, Sir Thomas’s absence from home in Mansfield Park that allows his sons and daughters the freedom to pursue their romantic entanglements without parental supervision. And in Pride and Prejudice, the presence of the militia in Meryton is the catalyst for Elizabeth Bennet’s misconceptions about Mr Darcy, which in turn drive the romantic plot. It is, in fact, a characteristic of Austen’s writing that there are no extraneous details that are irrelevant to either plot or characterisation. Her works are often considered to be the most perfectly constructed novels in the English language for this very reason, as well as because of the elegance of her prose style.

It took some time, however, before Jane Austen was recognized as a great writer. In the early and mid-nineteenth century, readers and critics tended to admire Austen for her pure morality, her skill in characterisation, the elegance of her writing and the natural or realistic quality of her works, but they tended not to think of her as a truly great writer, and they largely did not recognize the profundity of her satirical vision. Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for example, thought her works perfect in their own sphere but limited in their ambition and scope.

The most important literary successes of Jane Austen’s time were the Waverley novels, published anonymously from 1814 onwards by Sir Walter Scott. Before the Waverley novels burst upon the scene, and as the young Jane Austen was growing up and beginning to write, the best-known novelists of the 1790s and 1800s were Ann Radcliffe, whose Gothic stories Jane Austen parodied in Northanger Abbey, and Frances Burney, whose Cecilia may have provided the title for Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The last pages of Cecilia repeat the phrase three times: The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE […] Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.⁴ Austen also lived in a great age for poetry. The poetic movement that has now come to be known as Romanticism was born in the 1790s and flourished until beyond Austen’s death in 1817. The most popular poets of the era were Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott (discussed by Captain Benwick and Anne Elliot in Persuasion), but the works of William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, P. B. Shelley and John Keats were all known to Jane Austen.

In comparison to such bestsellers as Byron, Scott and Radcliffe, Jane Austen’s works enjoyed only modest success and reputation in her own time. Where, for example, Frances Burney made £2000 on her novel Camilla, the most popular of Austen’s novels in her lifetime, Mansfield Park, made her a profit of just over £310. Nonetheless, she did have a small but dedicated following from the very beginning, particularly among aristocratic and gentry-class coteries, and her literary contemporaries. Although her works were not widely reviewed, such reviews that did exist were very positive, recognising immediately the merit of each individual work. Her novels initially gained popularity largely through word of mouth among the closely connected and clannish aristocratic circles. In November 1811, just after the publication of Sense and Sensibility, the notorious but well-connected Lady Bessborough recommended the novel to a friend: It is a clever novel. They were full of it at Althrop, and tho’ it ends stupidly, I was much amus’d by it.⁵ Lady Bessborough was the sister of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (at whose home, Althrop, she had clearly been discussing the novel), and the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb, best known for her scandalous affair with Lord Byron, which she later published in fictionalized form as the novel Glenarvon. History does not relate whether Caroline Lamb read Austen’s novels (though it seems probable), but both Augusta Leigh, Byron’s half-sister, and Annabella Milbanke, Byron’s future wife, certainly did. Annabella reported that Pride and Prejudice was the fashionable novel of 1813 among her own circles, and told her mother she thought it to be a very superior work and the most probable novel she had ever read.⁶ Byron himself did not comment on Austen’s novels, but a number of other Romantic poets clearly read and enjoyed them.

Both S. T. Coleridge and Robert Southey, for example, admired Austen highly. Sara Coleridge, the poet’s daughter, thought Jane Austen to be the most faultless of female novelists, and reported that both her father and her uncle, Robert Southey, had an equally high opinion of her merits. William Wordsworth, on the other hand, used to say that though he admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading light of imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes.⁷ Obviously, discussions of Austen’s novels were not unusual among the Lake Poets, and her works seem to have contributed to important debates about the relationships between reality and imagination, key concepts in Romantic poetry.

Austen herself collected together the opinions of Mansfield Park and Emma of friends, family members and a wider circle of acquaintance. From this collection, we can gather much information about the expectations of her contemporary readers, and the extent to which Jane Austen’s novels met and overturned those expectations. In the early nineteenth century (Jane Austen’s novels were published between 1811 and 1818), the novel was not generally considered to be a form of high culture. Poetry, history and biography were the most reputable genres in which to write, and novels occupied a status and position below these, with many cultural commentators believing that fiction was actually dangerous for its readers. Although the novel as a form had its defenders, when Jane Austen began to write novels, she was fighting against a tide of opinion that saw her chosen art form as, at best, frivolous, and at worst, morally pernicious. Such opinions were not entirely unjustified, since at the time Austen entered the literary marketplace, the prevailing mode of writing was sensationalist gothic horror. Readers were more used to encountering far-fetched tales of kidnap, rape, murder and ghostly visitations than novels that depicted life as they actually knew it. In the 1810s, Jane Austen and Walter Scott created a taste for an entirely different mode of writing – one that would later come to be known as realism – and began the transformation of the novel into a serious literary form. In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen mounted a spirited defence of the novel, in which she claimed that novels had afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than any other genre of literature, and that they were the works which displayed the greatest powers of the mind, and evidenced the most thorough knowledge of human nature of any writing. She also suggested that novels included the liveliest effusions of wit and humour and were written in the best chosen language (Northanger Abbey, ch. 8). But in 1814 and 1815, as Austen’s early readers encountered Mansfield Park and Emma for the first time, such changes in perception were yet to come. Austen’s early readers approached her novels with the expectation that they would simply be entertained, and that if they happened to receive any moral enlightenment from fiction, it would come from the example of fictional characters who were morally or spiritually better than those in real life.

Readers were therefore surprised to find in Austen’s novels characters who were recognisably like them. As Lady Gordon put it,

In most novels you are amused for the time with a set of Ideal People whom you never think of afterwards or whom you the least expect to meet in common life, whereas in Miss A—’s works, & especially in M.P. you actually live with them, you fancy yourself one of the family; & the scenes are so exactly descriptive, so perfectly natural, that there is scarcely an Incident, or conversation, or a person, that you are not inclined to imagine you have at one time or other in your Life been a witness to, borne a part in, & been acquainted with.⁸

And readers were surprised to find themselves caught up in the action without any of the excitement generated by melodrama. The novelist Susan Ferrier, for example, wrote to her friend Miss Clavering of Emma: I have been reading Emma, which is excellent; there is no story whatsoever, and the heroine is no better than other people, but the characters are all so true to life, and the style so piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aids of mystery and adventure.⁹ Jane Austen’s most surprising achievement, in the eyes of her own contemporaries, was her ability to make the fictional seem natural or real.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the reputation of Austen’s novels gradually grew, helped by a number of positive retrospective reviews, and the enthusiasm of such public figures as Lord Macaulay and G. H. Lewes in the mid-century. Lewes made the claim that Austen was without a superior in the depiction of character, and in the truth of her representations, while Macaulay suggested that she was second only to Shakespeare in the ranks of England’s writers.

By the time James Edward Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen’s nephew, decided to publish a biography of his aunt in 1870, it was clear to him that there was public demand for more information about Jane Austen, and he presented his Memoir of Jane Austen to the public on that basis. From the 1870s onwards, Jane Austen’s works began to receive both serious critical attention and popular acclaim. Her work was admired by a number of influential literary men, such as A. C. Bradley, E. M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling, who all spread their view of Jane Austen’s excellence to the reading public at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1911, A. C. Bradley made the claim for Austen as both a serious moralist, and an incomparable humourist, and, in 1917, Reginald Farrer wrote an influential essay in the Times Literary Supplement, in which he established Austen’s technical mastery. Not everyone agreed, of course – the American novelist Mark Twain, in contrast, responded with a performative visceral dislike to Austen’s novels, wishing, on reading Pride and Prejudice, that he could dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.¹⁰ But by 1948, F. R. Leavis could confidently assert that Jane Austen was one of the four great English novelists of his putative Great Tradition (the others, in his opinion, were George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Henry James). Since then, Austen’s novels have been firmly entrenched in the curricula of schools and universities. Her place in the literary canon has been shored up by successive schools of literary criticism. While other authors go in and out of fashion, as critical tastes change, Austen remains consistently popular with both students and teachers. And Austen is, in fact, the only one of the writers in Leavis’s Great Tradition to have a significant popular readership as well as an academic one.

Throughout the twentieth century, Austen remained steadily popular – and occasioned a number of important critical debates – but it was not until the 1990s that the phenomenon dubbed Austen-mania really emerged. Jane Austen had always had a number of die-hard admirers; as early as 1927, Arnold Bennett commented that the reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause. They are nearly all fanatics – but it was Colin Firth’s performance as Mr Darcy in the BBC television series of 1995 that brought legions of new fans to her books.¹¹ The 1990s saw a number of screen adaptations of the novels, including the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (1995) and Persuasion (1995), Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park (1999), and two separate adaptations of Emma in 1996. The 2000s spawned yet more – including another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Davis (2005), another Mansfield Park, directed by Iain B. Macdonald (2007), another Persuasion (2007) and Jon Jones’ Northanger Abbey (2007). In addition to straight adaptations of the novels, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995) translated the plot of Emma into a 1990s Californian high school, while the 2004 Bollywood Bride and Prejudice (directed by Gurinder Chadha) relocated Pride and Prejudice to modern-day India, following in the footsteps of the less well-known Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), a Tamil-language version of Sense and Sensibility. Comic book titan Marvel Comics produced multi-instalment graphic novel adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (2009), Sense and Sensibility (2010), Northanger Abbey (2011), and Emma (2011) In 2007, Anne Hathaway starred as Jane Austen in the heavily fictionalized biopic, Becoming Jane (directed by Julian Jarrold), and a year later, Olivia Williams portrayed a very different Jane Austen in Miss Austen Regrets (2008). Reflecting the mood of the times, at the same time, two works which dealt directly with Austenian fandom appeared, the time-travel television series Lost in Austen (2008), in which the protagonist changes places with Elizabeth Bennet and lives out her fantasy of being a character in Pride and Prejudice and The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), a film based on Karen Joy Fowler’s 2004 novel of that name, which takes as its premise the idea that a book club might discuss only Jane Austen’s works, and the results of so doing. At the time of writing (2013), the Austen craze shows no sign of abating. The most recent film manifestation is Austenland (2013, based on Shannon Hale’s book of 2007), in which a woman obsessed with the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice travels to an Austen-themed resort in Britain, hoping to meet a real-life Mr Darcy. The bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice has been marked, not only by traditional academic events such as conferences and the usual publishers’ reissues of the novel, but also by radio programmes, Regency balls, and television programmes, including the BBC’s recreation of the Netherfield Ball at Chawton House Library (the former home of Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Knight), complete with historically accurate food, make-up, clothing and candles. Websites dedicated entirely to Jane Austen abound, and a large number of completions, sequels, prequels and spin-off novels continue to be written and published, either in conventional print formats or self-published on web platforms such as Wattpad. Jane Austen features as a detective in Stephanie Barron’s successful series of murder mysteries, and it is now hard to imagine an Austen mash-up genre that does not yet exist. Her novels have been rewritten and repurposed to include pop stars, pornography, zombies, werewolves, sea-monsters, aliens and time travel, to name only a few. Regardless of the literary merit of such works, it cannot be denied that they demonstrate the intense and continuing devotion that readers feel to Jane Austen’s novels, and for the author herself.

Why are Jane Austen’s works so enduringly popular? Virginia Woolf thought that of all great writers, she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.¹² Critics have argued for more than two centuries now about what makes Jane Austen a great novelist, and consensus remains elusive, though there is some common ground on which all agree. First and foremost, of course, Jane Austen is a great comic writer, with a brilliant ear for dialogue, and a talent for creating familiar and life-like characters. Her fools, in particular, are recognisable across time and cultures. Who does not know someone who is, like Northanger Abbey’s Mrs Allen, obsessed with fashion and clothes? Who has not met somebody whose opinion of their own worth is higher than it should be, like Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins, or Persuasion’s Sir Walter Elliot? Don’t we all know a scheming Lady Susan, who is only out for her own good? Secondly, Jane Austen’s plotting is tight, smart and economical – as G. H. Lewes put it as early as 1859: no novelist has approached her in what we may style ‘the economy of art’, by which is meant the easy adaptation of means to ends, with no aid from extraneous or superfluous elements.¹³ And her writing style is unusually elegant. But the same could be said of many writers who share her indubitable technical expertise, but do not have Austen’s fame or durability. What sets Jane Austen apart?

Austen herself wrote, in a letter to her sister Cassandra, I do not write for such dull Elves / As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.¹⁴ Another way of putting this would be to say that Austen’s primary mode of writing is ironic, and irony depends, for its comic effects, on the gap between what is said and what is meant. Her novels therefore depend on her readers’ willingness to engage actively with the writing, and to fill in what is not said for themselves. Readers can share a joke with the author against the foolish, mercenary or downright unpleasant characters in the novels, and we learn self-knowledge alongside Austen’s heroines. In so doing, we feel pleasantly aligned on the side of narrative authority against folly and vice. It is this quality in the writing which makes readers feel, as Katherine Mansfield wrote, that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone – reading between the lines – has become the secret friend of their author.¹⁵ And it is Austen’s sparseness and economy that also allows successive generations to project onto Jane Austen’s works their own preoccupations, to re-interpret Jane Austen for themselves and to find in her writing relevance to their own lives.

It is also indisputably the case that many readers find Jane Austen’s novels to be comforting and often inspiring. Readers in search of romance will find it in Austen’s books, where the good characters get married and have their happy endings. But they will also find a robust scepticism about human nature, and a realistic acceptance of people as they are. W. H. Auden perceptively noted that Austen’s novels ruthlessly exposed the economic basis of society;¹⁶ at the same time, she is never cynical about the possibility of love, or its place in human happiness. Perhaps Jane Austen’s greatest achievement may be that she makes us believe in the possibility of romance, even as she ironizes it.

In the postmodern world, readers may find consolation in entering a fictional world that appears to be more stable, where moral values seem to be more certain, where community is valued above individualism and the good get their due rewards. In 1957, C. S. Lewis related the sense of certainty engendered by Austen’s novels to her word choices: the great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists are unblushingly and uncompromisingly used; good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, ‘some duty neglected, some failing indulged’, impropriety, indelicacy, generous candour, blamable distrust, just humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason. These are the concepts by which Jane Austen grasps the world. [...] All is hard, clear, definable; by some modern standards, even naively so.¹⁷ Although it is, of course, an illusion, Austen’s fictional world may thus seem more solid than our own real one, with all of its shifting uncertainties. It is no coincidence that Austen’s novels enjoy a resurgence of popularity at moments of particular cultural crisis, such as during both World Wars and the so-called War on Terror of the 2000s.

The seven works collected here are by a consummate artist, and reveal two distinct stages in her artistic development. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey were all first written in the 1790s, and substantially revised over the following ten to fifteen years before publication in 1811, 1813 and 1818 respectively. Lady Susan’s composition date is less certain, but the most authoritative criticism suggests that it was written around the same time as Sense and Sensibility (1794–95). These four works are those of a young, and precociously brilliant writer. Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion are the novels of Austen’s mature years, written between 1813 and 1817, and published in 1814, 1815 and 1818. These are her most technically accomplished novels, bearing the hallmarks of a professional writer, who had learned and honed her literary techniques through exposure to the literary marketplace. All seven bear out Austen’s defence of the novel in Northanger Abbey. For the past two hundred years, they have proven that novels can use the best-chosen language and provide unparalleled insight into human nature. In so doing, they have afforded extensive and unaffected pleasure to their readers. No doubt they will do so for two hundred more.

Katie Halsey,

University of Stirling

Recommended Further Reading

Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections. Edited by Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2002.

Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Gloucestershire: Clarendon Press, 1988.

Byrne, Paula. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. London: HarperCollins, 2014.

Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Halsey, Katie. Jane Austen and her Readers, 1786–1945. London: Anthem Press, 2012.

Harding, D. W. Regulated Hatred and Other Essays on Jane Austen. Edited by Monica Lawlor. London: Athlone Press, 1998.

Harman, Claire. Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. London: Canongate, 2009.

Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988.

Johnson, Claudia and Clara Tuite, eds. A Companion to Jane Austen. Oxfordshire: Blackwell, 2012.

Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen’s Letters. 4th edn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Mandal, Anthony. Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Mullan, John. What Matters in Jane Austen: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Murphy, Olivia. Jane Austen the Reader: The Artist as Critic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage. 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1968 and 1987.

Tandon, Bharat. Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation. London: Anthem Press, 2003.

Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Todd, Janet, ed. Jane Austen in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Todd, Janet. The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. London: Penguin Books, 1998.

Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Notes

1 Tony Tanner, Original Penguin Classics Introduction to Pride and Prejudice (1972), in Pride and Prejudice, ed. Vivien Jones (Penguin, 2003), 368–9.

2 Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. by Deirdre Le Faye, 3rd edn (Oxford University Press, 1995), 312; 306.

3 Austen’s Letters, 275.

4 Frances Burney, Cecilia, ed. Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody (Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), 930.

5 Henrietta, Countess of Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, 24 November 1811. Quoted in David Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Oak Knoll Press, 1997), 9.

6 Quoted in Gilson, Bibliography, 25.

7 Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, ed. Edith Coleridge (King & Co., 1873), I:75.

8 Opinions of Mansfield Park, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen: Later Manuscripts, ed. Janet Todd and Linda Bree (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 234.

9 Quoted in Gilson, Bibliography, 71.

10 Quoted in B. C. Southam, ed., Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 2 vols (Routledge, 1968 and 1987), II:232.

11 Arnold Bennett, Books and Persons column, Evening Standard, 21 July 1927.

12 Quoted in Southam, ed., Critical Heritage, II:301.

13 G. H. Lewes, The Novels of Jane Austen, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 86 (July, 1859): 99–113 (102).

14 Austen’s Letters, 202.

15 Katherine Mansfield, Novels and Novelists (Constable & Co, 1930), 304.

16 W. H. Auden, Letter to Lord Byron, in Letters from Iceland (Faber & Faber, 1937), 19.

17 C. S. Lewis, A Note on Jane Austen, Essays in Criticism IV(4) (October, 1954): 359–71 (363).

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman’s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to his existence.

By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father’s inheriting that property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the remaining moiety of his first wife’s fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life interest in it.

The old Gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son:—but to his son, and his son’s son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision, by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece.

Mr. Dashwood’s disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was cheerful and sanguine, and he might reasonably hope to live many years, and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the produce of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate improvement. But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was his only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer; and ten thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained for his widow and daughters.

His son was sent for, as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr. Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.

Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for them.

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:—he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;—more narrow-minded and selfish.

When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother’s fortune, warmed his heart and made him feel capable of generosity.—Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.—He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent.

No sooner was his father’s funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood, without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law, arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her right to come; the house was her husband’s from the moment of his father’s decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood’s situation, with only common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;—but in her mind there was a sense of honour so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of immoveable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it.

So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother.

Elinor, this eldest daughter whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart;—her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.

Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in every thing; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was every thing but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great.

Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister’s sensibility; but by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished. They encouraged each other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of grief which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could struggle, she could exert herself. She could consult with her brother, could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with proper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.

Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humoured well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne’s romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards any body beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation was accepted.

A continuance in a place where every thing reminded her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself. But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy, and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy.

Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy, would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?

It was my father’s last request to me, replied her husband, that I should assist his widow and daughters.

He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.

He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it: at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.

Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider, she added, that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could ever be restored to our poor little boy—

Why, to be sure, said her husband, very gravely, that would make a great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition.

To be sure it would.

Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties if the sum were diminished one half.—Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!

Oh! beyond any thing great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is—only half blood!—But you have such a generous spirit!

I would not wish to do any thing mean, he replied. One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more.

There is no knowing what they may expect, said the lady, but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do.

Certainly—and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have above three thousand pounds on their mother’s death—a very comfortable fortune for any young woman.

To be sure it is: and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds.

That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives rather than for them—something of the annuity kind I mean.—My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable.

His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.

To be sure, said she, it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But then if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years, we shall be completely taken in.

Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase.

Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is any annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father’s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother’s disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.

It is certainly an unpleasant thing, replied Mr. Dashwood, to have those kind of yearly drains on one’s income. One’s fortune, as your mother justly says, is not one’s own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one’s independence.

Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses.

I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father.

To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I’ll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a-year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?—They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expences of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a-year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.

Upon my word, said Mr. Dashwood, I believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then.

Certainly, returned Mrs. John Dashwood. But, however, one thing must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it.

That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here.

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes, for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost every thing in the world to them.

This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. But she could hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which her mother would have approved.

Mrs. Dashwood had been informed by her husband of the solemn promise on the part of his son in their favour, which gave comfort to his last earthly reflections. She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no more than he had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her daughters’ sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was persuaded that a much smaller provision than 70001. would support her in affluence. For their brother’s sake too, for the sake of his own heart she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to his merit before, in believing him incapable of generosity. His attentive behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that their welfare was dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied on the liberality of his intentions.

The contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, felt for her daughter-inlaw, was very much increased by the farther knowledge of her character, which half a year’s residence in her family afforded; and perhaps in spite of every consideration of politeness or maternal affection on the side of the former, the two ladies might have found it impossible to have lived together so long, had not a particular circumstance occurred to give still greater eligibility, according to the opinions of Mrs. Dashwood, to her daughters’ continuance at Norland.

This circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, a gentlemanlike and pleasing young man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister’s establishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of his time there.

Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of interest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died very rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence, for, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the will of his mother. But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable, that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality. It was contrary to every doctrine of her’s that difference of fortune should keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of disposition; and that Elinor’s merit should not be acknowledged by every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible.

Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open affectionate heart. His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid improvement. But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him distinguished—as—they hardly knew what. They wanted him to make a fine figure in the world in some manner or other. His mother wished to interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. John Dashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her ambition to see him driving a barouche. But Edward had no turn for great men or barouches. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother who was more promising.

Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged much of Mrs. Dashwood’s attention; for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation. She was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a reflection which Elinor chanced one day to make on the difference between him and his sister. It was a contrast which recommended him most forcibly to her mother.

It is enough, said she; to say that he is unlike Fanny is enough. It implies every thing amiable. I love him already.

I think you will like him, said Elinor, when you know more of him.

Like him! replied her mother with a smile. I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.

You may esteem him.

I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love.

Mrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him. Her manners were attaching and soon banished his reserve. She speedily comprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Elinor perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his worth: and even that quietness of manner which militated against all her established ideas of what a young man’s address ought to be, was no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his temper affectionate.

No sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to Elinor, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.

In a few months, my dear Marianne, said she, Elinor will in all probability be settled for life. We shall miss her; but she will be happy.

Oh! mama, how shall we do without her?

My love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a few miles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will gain a brother, a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest opinion in the world of Edward’s heart. But you look grave, Marianne; do you disapprove your sister’s choice?

Perhaps, said Marianne, I may consider it with some surprise. Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet—he is not the kind of young man—there is a something wanting—his figure is not striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, I am afraid, mama, he has no real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor’s drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!—

He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time; but you would give him Cowper.

Nay, mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!—but we must allow for difference of taste. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke my heart had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must have all Edward’s virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm.

Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in life to despair of such an happiness. Why should you be less fortunate than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your destiny be different from her’s!

CHAPTER IV.

What a pity it is, Elinor, said Marianne, that Edward should have no taste for drawing.

No taste for drawing, replied Elinor; "why should you think so? He does not

Reviews for Jane Austen

[rita_bertani · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Sense and sensibility and Pride and prejudice a thousand times, but I don't like Emma. I found it too laborious.

[slamkin-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

SENSE & SENSIBILITY: I read this many years ago on vacation on Mackinic Island and when I heard the "clip clock" of the horses as I read I felt like I stept back in time. Jane Austen has an amazing way of making her characters come alive.PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: What a wonderful classic story of how love can overcome prejudice, if one gives it a chance. Elizabeth, a strong, intelligent and independent woman, of her time, tries to find love but not to let her heart rule her mind. She tries, to the best of her ability, to determine Darsy’s character and intentions by following the counsel of others. However, she does not know till later how she let her mind rule over her heart. Fortunately, Jane Austen gives us a happy ending and all is well.Many may say that her stories have the similar patterns and yet we forget that we are judging her by today’s standards. She wrote about what she knew, plus she knew people needed stories with happy endings. After all she lived in the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The news of death and destruction reached even the small towns and villages and these stories gave one a chance to escape from all that.EMMA: Yet another wonderful book by Jane Austen. Emma Woodhouse, a clever and independent thinker, tries so hard to be a good daughter and friend but ends up having to rethink her approach. That being said, I still recommend this book.

[dorotheasocea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A rare find, each story in a separate volume. I thoroughly enjoyed them all including an extra bonus shorter work where the villainous lead loses her edge and the man she hoped to entwine. Will have to add the exact title of that later. Amazing collection she created!

[kw50197 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My favourites in the following order :1. Pride and Prejudice2. Sense and Sensibility3. Mansfield Park

[soheyr_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

She is simply still the BEST.

[msnikki · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Jane Austen's work, she is one of my favourite authors. I haven't read her entire collection, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abby, and Persuasion are still on my reading list. And this collection is really my mother's, I need to bind it for her.I know Austen has been criticised for being too narrow with her subject matter. She rarely if ever makes mention of the political realities of her time. But topics covered in her novels spans several modern university courses including gender affairs and relations, psychology and sociology.For me I love her language her quips and accute assessment of human behaviour. I remember when I first picked up Pride and Prejudice, I was stunned that the themes were so modern. I have no idea what I thought people did in the 18th Century, but I didn't expect this.Highly recommended.

[lenabq · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book it self is too big to read, too bulky. But the stories are brilliant. The best of English literature.

[arelenriel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Jane Austen, excellent.