Once second fiddle to Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, has grown popular among scholarly as well as general audiences and is now scrutinized by a wide range of critics in complex and rewarding interpretations. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1813 second edition, which includes Jane Austen's latest revisions and corrections. It is accompanied by explanatory footnotes, textual notes, and a map of early-nineteenth-century England.
"Contexts" explores the personal and social issues that loom large in the novel -- sense, sensibility, self-control, judgment, romantic love, family, and inheritance -- in works by Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and an anonymous contributor to Lady's Magazine.
In essays on topics such as language, sexuality, power, and movies, "Criticism" collects six early and twelve modern assessments of Sense and Sensibility including. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.