Sense and Sensibility

Two sisters, one who says everything she feels and one who says almost nothing, are left with a small income and an unreliable supply of suitors. Austen's first published novel already has the machinery complete: money discussed with total accuracy, feeling observed without mercy, and comedy that never spares the person we are meant to like. She published it anonymously, as "By a Lady". Twenty-two plates of parks, portraits and family estates by painters including Constable and Raeburn give a face to the property and prospects on which every courtship here turns.