Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) Book

Sense and Sensibility, the first of Jane Austen's major novels, revolves around Elinor and Marianne, two daughters of Mr Dashwood by his second wife. They have a younger sister, Margaret, and an older half-brother named John. When their father dies, the family estate passes to John, and the Dashwood women are left in reduced circumstances. The novel follows the Dashwood sisters to their new home, a cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience both romance and heartbreak. The contrast between the sisters' characters is eventually resolved as they each find love and lasting happiness. Through the events in the novel, Elinor and Marianne encounter the sense and sensibility of life and love.

I love the sharp insight that Jane Austen can provide into the character and motivations of her creations. Sense and Sensibility is the portrait of two very different sisters: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Elinor is practical and disciplined, Marianne is capricious and emotional, yet they share a troubled and impoverished family background, and both must struggle to achieve the happiness they deserve. Ranged against them are the forces of a society where men and masculinity dominate; Elinor and Marianne have to balance their emotional needs against the harsh financial realities of the world at large.

Sense and Sensibility is vintage Jane Austen; a chronicle of romantic misfortunes, narrated with irony and a sharp eye for hypocrisy. A powerful drama of family life and growing up, the novel is at once a subtle comedy of manners and a striking critique of early 19th century society. Austen's subtle wit and her masterful observation of her characters have rendered a novel that is, at heart at least, a romance into a real page-turner. No one does romantic twists and turns as well as Jane Austen and some of the twists in Sense and Sensibility will make your jaw drop. Although perhaps not quite so sublime as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility is still highly recommended.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened loss - the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo.