



Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall and Sankar Viswanathan (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
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                         Transcriber's Note:

The Table of Contents is not part of the original book. The illustration
on page 290 is missing from the book. The Introduction ends abruptly.
Seems incomplete.


       [Illustration: _Mr. Dashwood introduced him._--P. 219.]



                         SENSE & SENSIBILITY



                                  BY

                             JANE AUSTEN



                         WITH AN INTRODUCTION


                                  BY

                            AUSTIN DOBSON



                             ILLUSTRATED


                                  BY

                             HUGH THOMSON






                  LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

                   NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

                                 1902



        _First Edition with Hugh Thomson's Illustrations_ 1896

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L

       *       *       *       *       *




INTRODUCTION


With the title of _Sense and Sensibility_ is connected one of those minor
problems which delight the cummin-splitters of criticism. In the _Cecilia_
of Madame D'Arblay--the forerunner, if not the model, of Miss Austen--is a
sentence which at first sight suggests some relationship to the name of
the book which, in the present series, inaugurated Miss Austen's novels.
'The whole of this unfortunate business'--says a certain didactic Dr.
Lyster, talking in capitals, towards the end of volume three of
_Cecilia_--'has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE,' and looking to
the admitted familiarity of Miss Austen with Madame D'Arblay's work, it
has been concluded that Miss Austen borrowed from _Cecilia_, the title of
her second novel. But here comes in the little problem to which we have
referred. _Pride and Prejudice_ it is true, was written and finished
before _Sense and Sensibility_--its original title for several years being
_First Impressions_. Then, in 1797, the author fell to work upon an older
essay in letters _a la_ Richardson, called _Elinor and Marianne_, which
she re-christened _Sense and Sensibility._ This, as we know, was her first
published book; and whatever may be the connection between the title of
_Pride and Prejudice_ and the passage in _Cecilia_, there is an obvious
connection between the title of _Pride and Prejudice_ and the _title of
Sense and Sensibility_. If Miss Austen re-christened _Elinor and
Marianne_ before she changed the title of _First Impressions_, as she well
may have, it is extremely unlikely that the name of _Pride and Prejudice_
has anything to do with _Cecilia_ (which, besides, had been published at
least twenty years before). Upon the whole, therefore, it is most likely
that the passage in Madame D'Arblay is a mere coincidence; and that in
_Sense and Sensibility_, as well as in the novel that succeeded it in
publication, Miss Austen, after the fashion of the old morality plays,
simply substituted the leading characteristics of her principal personages
for their names. Indeed, in _Sense and Sensibility_ the sense of Elinor,
and the sensibility (or rather _sensiblerie_) of Marianne, are markedly
emphasised in the opening pages of the book But Miss Austen subsequently,
and, as we think, wisely, discarded in her remaining efforts the cheap
attraction of an alliterative title. _Emma_ and _Persuasion, Northanger
Abbey_ and _Mansfield Park_, are names far more in consonance with the
quiet tone of her easy and unobtrusive art.

_Elinor and Marianne_ was originally written about 1792. After the
completion--or partial completion, for it was again revised in
1811--of _First Impressions_ (subsequently _Pride and Prejudice_),
Miss Austen set about recasting _Elinor and Marianne_, then composed
in the form of letters; and she had no sooner accomplished this task,
than she began _Northanger Abbey_. It would be interesting to know to
what extent she remodelled _Sense and Sensibility_ in 1797-98, for we
are told that previous to its publication in 1811 she again devoted a
considerable time to its preparation for the press, and it is clear
that this does not mean the correction of proofs alone, but also a
preliminary revision of MS. Especially would it be interesting if we
could ascertain whether any of its more finished passages, _e.g._ the
admirable conversation between the Miss Dashwoods and Willoughby in
chapter x., were the result of those fallow and apparently barren
years at Bath and Southampton, or whether they were already part of
the second version of 1797-98. But upon this matter the records are
mute. A careful examination of the correspondence published by Lord
Brabourne in 1884 only reveals two definite references to _Sense and
Sensibility_ and these are absolutely unfruitful in suggestion. In
April 1811 she speaks of having corrected two sheets of 'S and S,'
which she has scarcely a hope of getting out in the following June;
and in September, an extract from the diary of another member of the
family indirectly discloses the fact that the book had by that time
been published. This extract is a brief reference to a letter which
had been received from Cassandra Austen, begging her correspondent not
to mention that Aunt Jane wrote _Sense and Sensibility._ Beyond these
minute items of information, and the statement--already referred to in
the Introduction to _Pride and Prejudice_--that she considered herself
overpaid for the labour she had bestowed upon it, absolutely nothing
seems to have been preserved by her descendants respecting her first
printed effort. In the absence of particulars some of her critics have
fallen to speculate upon the reason which made her select it, and not
_Pride and Prejudice_, for her debut; and they have, perhaps
naturally, found in the fact a fresh confirmation of that traditional
blindness of authors to their own best work, which is one of the
commonplaces of literary history. But this is to premise that she
_did_ regard it as her masterpiece, a fact which, apart from this
accident of priority of issue, is, as far as we are aware, nowhere
asserted. A simpler solution is probably that, of the three novels she
had written or sketched by 1811, _Pride and Prejudice_ was languishing
under the stigma of having been refused by one bookseller without the
formality of inspection, while _Northanger Abbey_ was lying _perdu_ in
another bookseller's drawer at Bath. In these circumstances it is
intelligible that she should turn to _Sense and Sensibility_, when, at
length--upon the occasion of a visit to her brother in London in the
spring of 1811--Mr. T. Egerton of the 'Military Library,' Whitehall,
dawned upon the horizon as a practicable publisher.

By the time _Sense and Sensibility_ left the press, Miss Austen was
again domiciled at Chawton Cottage. For those accustomed to the
sw