1811
Sense and Sensibility
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.
In October 1811, a three-volume novel appeared in London bookshops with no author’s name — just “By a Lady” — and its writer paid the printing costs herself, half expecting to lose money. Sense and Sensibility instead sold out its first edition, earned Jane Austen the first £140 of her writing life, and quietly began the most durable career in English fiction.
From “Elinor and Marianne” to print
The novel began in the mid-1790s as Elinor and Marianne, probably an epistolary draft (a novel in letters), read aloud to the family circle at Steventon. Austen rewrote it into direct narration around 1797–98, then revised it again at Chawton in 1809–1810 — meaning her “first” novel is really a fifteen-year palimpsest, a young writer’s material finished with a mature writer’s control.
She published “on commission”: Egerton printed, Austen bore the risk and kept the profits. Her brother Henry later recalled that she set money aside against the expected loss. The gamble paid: by July 1813 the edition had sold through, and the Critical Review and British Critic both gave it approving (if brief) notices.
The argument in the title
The title promises a debate, and generations of readers have picked sides. But the novel’s real position is harder than “sense good, sensibility bad”: Elinor’s restraint nearly costs her everything and forces her to grieve alone; Marianne’s openness is punished savagely — public humiliation, near-fatal illness. Austen’s target is less feeling itself than the fashionable performance of feeling (Marianne judging people by their taste in Cowper), and the market conditions that make women’s feelings a luxury they can’t always afford.
The money underneath
No Austen novel is blunter about economics. It opens not with a ball but with an inheritance: the Dashwood women’s fortunes are destroyed in chapter two by a conversation, as John Dashwood’s wife talks him down from generosity to nothing in two pages of the most chilling comic dialogue Austen ever wrote. Everything that follows — where the sisters can live, whom they can marry, how urgently — flows from that scene.
Its standing
Sense and Sensibility tends to sit mid-table in rankings of the six novels — less perfect than Emma, less beloved than Pride and Prejudice — but its stock has risen steadily, helped by Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s 1995 film, still among the finest Austen adaptations ever made.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Sense and Sensibility published?
Sense and Sensibility was published in October 1811 by Thomas Egerton, at Austen's own financial risk ("on commission"). The anonymous title page read only "By a Lady."
Did Jane Austen make money from Sense and Sensibility?
Yes — the first edition sold out by mid-1813 and earned her about £140, the first money she ever made from writing. She kept the copyright, unlike Pride and Prejudice, which she later sold outright.
Which sister is "sense" and which is "sensibility"?
Elinor embodies sense — judgment, restraint, self-command; Marianne embodies sensibility — the era's cult of intense feeling. The novel complicates the scheme, though — Elinor feels as deeply as Marianne, and the plot punishes both extremes.