When Jane Austen began the writing of
Sense and Sensibilityin 1795, the title she gave to her manuscript was
Elinor and Marianne; also, she wrote it in epistolary form. In the course of subsequent rewritings during 1797-1798, Austen abandoned the epistolary form and renamed it
Sense and Sensibility. Two centuries later, British novelist Emma Tennant wondered what the novel would have looked like had Austen kept the epistolary form, and chose to tell the continuation of Elinor and Marianne’s lives by means of an exchange of letters in her sequel to
Sense and Sensibility.
As well as recovering the original epistolary form, Tennant additionally titled her sequel Elinor and Marianne. Tennant’s work recounts the married lives of the two eldest Dashwood sisters through the letters they
643 words
Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "Elinor and Marianne". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 November 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5417, accessed 24 April 2024.]
