Two sisters of opposing temperaments who share the pangs of tragic love provide the theme for Jane Austen’s dramatically human narrative. ;;Elinor, practical and conventional, is the perfection of sense. Marianne, emotional and sentimental, is the embodiment of sensibility. To each comes the sorrow of unhappy love. ; ; Their mutual suffering brings a closer understanding between the two sisters-and true love finally triumphs when sense gives way to sensibility and sensibility gives way to sense. Jane Austen’s authentic representation of early-nineteenth-century middle-class provincial life, written with forceful insight and gentle irony, makes her novels the enduring works on the mores and manners of her time.;;With an Introduction by Margaret Drabble;and an Afterword by Mary Balogh