A Reading of Sense and Sensibility

In 1996 on Austen-l and in 1999 on Janeites scheduled group conversations of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility occurred. On both lists we also read and discussed a series of critical books which included critical essays on Sense and Sensibility. I posted continually during all these conversations, and have brought together in one place a very few of my essay-postings, interventions and responses to others during these online discussions. As with all the other group conversation and single essays I have placed on the Net form such conversations, I have altered the postings slightly so as to make for continuity and have occasionally rearranged them so the reader can follow the conversation as one would a story. Read as a series they form a close reading of Sense and Sensibility against a scholarly critical background.

I argue elsewhere that a study of the calendar in the extant Sense and Sensibility suggests the strong probability that the novel was originally epistolary; I also review the recent film adaptations of Jane Austen's novels as Jane Austen in Film.

Introduction

Volume I, Chapters 1-3

Volume I, Chapters 4-6

Volume I, Chapters 7-9

Volume I, Chapters 10-12

Volume I, Chapters 13-15

Volume I, Chapters 16-18

Volume I, Chapters 19-20

Volume I, Chapters 21-22

Volume II, Chapters 1-5 (or 23-27)

Volume II, Chapters 6-8 (or 28-30)

Volume II, Chapters 9-11 (or 31-33)

Volume II, Chapters 12-14 (or 34-36)

Volume III, Chapters 1-3 (or 37-39)

Volume III, Chapters 4-7 (or 40-43)

Volume III, Chapters 8-11 (or 44-47)

Volume III, Chapters 12-14 (or 48-50)