Sense and Sensibility (Wordsworth Collector’s Edition) (Wordsworth Collector’s Editions)

Product Description

‘Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security’. Jane Austen’s sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor’s character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival. This book, the first of Austen s novels to be published, remains as fresh a cautionary tale today as it ever was. Wordsworth Collector’s Editions are compact cloth-bound hardbacks with matching coloured end papers, embossed gold and coloured blocking to enhance their beautiful, bespoke cover illustrations. Publication date: December 2020

About the Author

Jane Austen was born at home, as was common practice, on December 16th 1775, to the Reverend George and Cassandra (Leigh) Austen, in the Rectory at Steventon, Hampshire, where Mr. Austen had the living. Jane was their seventh child, preceded by five brothers and her sister Cassandra, three years her senior, who was to become her closest friend, ally and admirer. A last son was born four years after Jane, in 1779. Her father, as well as performing his clerical and pastoral duties, ran a small farm, and together with his wife, took in boy pupils, who lived in the house; the older boys of the family were at this stage educated alongside them. Jane was thus born into a large and busy household. In 1783, Jane (then seven), along with Cassandra (ten), went away to school, first in Oxford, and then in Southampton, with Mrs. Cawley. However, in Southampton, illness hit their school and the sisters were brought back home to recuperate. By this time their brother Edward had been adopted by Mr and Mrs Thomas Knight (Mr. Knight being a distant cousin of Revd. Austen); George, who is usually and rather vaguely described as not developing normally, was being cared for away from home; and James had already matriculated from St. John s College, Oxford. Jane and Cassandra had a year at home, before being sent to the Abbey School, Reading, in 1785. They left in December 1786 and at that point their formal schooling ended. In 1787, Jane began writing the first of her Juvenilia. Another of the Austen family relationships should be mentioned at this point. Jane s Aunt Philadelphia her father s sister had in 1751 travelled to India and shortly thereafter married Tysoe Hancock, an employee of the East India Company. In 1759 the couple became friends with Warren Hastings, who would eventually become Governor of India (and then be tried for his misdemeanours in that role). In 1759, his wife and baby daughter had just died, and his young son George was to be sent back to England for health reasons. (It fell to George and Cassandra Austen in the early months of their marriage to look after this son in the last few months of his life; he died in their care.) Meanwhile, Philadelphia, having been childless in her marriage to Hancock for eight years, became pregnant in 1861 and her daughter Eliza was born in December of that year. At least one of Austen s biographers, Claire Tomalin, raises the possibility that this child might have been fathered by Hastings, and she offers strong but circumstantial evidence for this. Lord Clive (he of India) warned his wife against associating with Philadelphia because of her involvement with Hastings. Hastings was the child s godfather; he travelled back to England with the Hancocks and Eliza in 1765; in both 1772 and 1775 Hastings settled sums of £5,000 on Eliza; Eliza s own first son was christened Hastings. The facts are unknowable as is whether anyone beyond Philadelphia herself knew them. But aside from that issue, Cousin Eliza played a significant role in Ja