Jane Austen’s Novels

Sense and Sensibility (1811) was Jane Austen's first published novel, issued anonymously as 'By a Lady'. It contrasts the Dashwood sisters — prudent Elinor and passionate Marianne — as reduced circumstances force them from their home and into the Regency marriage market.

Pride and Prejudice (1813) is Jane Austen's second published novel and her most famous work. It follows Elizabeth Bennet, the quick-witted second of five sisters, as she navigates courtship, class, and her evolving judgment of the proud Mr. Darcy in Regency-era England.

Mansfield Park (1814) is Austen's most serious novel. Shy, principled Fanny Price is raised by wealthy relations at Mansfield Park, where questions of morality, education, and integrity play out against flirtation and worldliness.

Emma (1815) follows Emma Woodhouse, 'handsome, clever, and rich', a self-appointed matchmaker in the village of Highbury whose schemes misfire until she learns to know her own heart. Many critics consider it Austen's most technically perfect novel.

Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1817) is Austen's affectionate parody of Gothic fiction. Naive Catherine Morland's imagination, fed on novels, runs wild during her visit to the Tilneys' abbey before reality gently corrects her.

Persuasion (published posthumously in 1817) is Austen's last completed novel and her most autumnal. Anne Elliot, persuaded eight years earlier to refuse Captain Wentworth, meets him again — successful, resentful, and still unmarried.

Lady Susan is Jane Austen's early epistolary novella, written around 1794 but not published until 1871 — over fifty years after her death. Its heroine, the widowed and manipulative Lady Susan Vernon, is Austen's most openly scheming creation, seducing and scheming her way through other people's households.

Sanditon is Jane Austen's last work, abandoned after eleven chapters in March 1817 when her final illness made writing impossible; she died four months later. Set in a fledgling seaside resort town being remade by speculation and health fads, it is Austen's most forward-looking, commercially minded fragment — and her most tantalizing might-have-been.