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Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility
Nov 11, 2025 9:19 AM

Author:Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility

The Penguin English Library Edition of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

"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!"

Jane Austen's novel tells the story of Marianne Dashwood, who 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.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Reviews

The candour and extremity and intelligence of My First Wife are profoundly affecting ... This is a literary masterwork of a vanished kind, but through the remarkable Hofmann it is born again as a story for our age. Hogmann has the rare ability to refresh the very heart of a text in translating it, to increase its connections to life

—— Rachel Cusk , Guardian

The opening pages of this novel are ike something out of Chekhov - it's all there, the ennui, the preening etiquette, the intellectual posturing ... painfully heartfelt ... My First Wife is a devastating indictment of the choices we make out of convenience against our hearts and instincts, and the tragedies that ensue

—— Independent

You won't find a more agonising, fascinating literary account of a marriage hitting the rocks

—— Mail Online

[Wassermann's] most elegant and focused work

—— London Review of Books

Gloriously vivacious and nuanced

—— Guardian

Funny, poignant and original, this country-house whodunit made me laugh out loud, and nod in recognition at its acerbic observations

—— Country Life
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