Sense and Sensibility is famously characterized as the story of two Dashwood sisters who embody the conflict between the oppressive nature of 'civilized' society and the human desire for romantic passion. However, there is far more to this story of two daughters made homeless by the death of their father. Elinor, 19, and Marianne, 17, initially play opposing roles with Elinor cautious and unassuming about romantic matters, while Marianne is wild and passionate when she falls hopelessly in love with the libertine Mr Willoughby. But lessons in love and life see the two characters develop and change with sense and sensibility needing to be compromised as a matter of survival.

Written when Austen was just nineteen, this story has been read as a biographical reflection of her relationship with her own sister Cassandra, with the younger Jane being the victim of 'sensibility'. However, the novel is far more than a simple case of passion versus manners, and depicts the romantic complications of two women made highly vulnerable by the loss of their father and estate. With a raw and intense quality Austen creates a romantic masterpiece on the backdrop of a fragile social context.

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'Jane Austen is one of my favourite writers... very acute, very perceptive, and writing in close and honest detail about the tiny preoccupations of women’s lives – preoccupations which speak of much larger social and human issues.' – Helen Fielding

'As a creative realist, giving to her characters the very body and pressure of actual life, no writer, living or dead, has surpassed her.' – John Cowper Powys

'The poet should kick out every line that isn’t as Jane Austen would have written it in prose.' – Ezra Pound

'Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives... Yet she writes about these humdrum lives with such empathy that they seem endlessly fascinating.' – Mark Haddon

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Read an excerpt from Sense and Sensibility

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