50 Fun Facts About Sense and Sensibility

Which novel appeared in 1813 credited only to 'the Author of Sense and Sensibility'?

Pride and Prejudice. Its publisher had bought the copyright outright for £110, so he made more money from Austen's second novel than she did.

What was Austen's working title for Sense and Sensibility?

Elinor and Marianne named the 1790s draft after its heroines; the final title swaps the names for what the sisters stand for, Elinor's sense and Marianne's sensibility.

How was the author identified on the 1811 title page of Sense and Sensibility?

By A Lady kept her name off the title page, as was usual for women who wrote for money but wished to stay respectable; none of Austen's novels carried her name in her lifetime.

The three Dashwood sisters are Elinor, Marianne and which thirteen-year-old?

Margaret, the youngest, is the one who lets slip at a dinner party that Elinor has an admirer whose name begins with F.

In which county is the Dashwoods' original family estate?

Sussex is home to Norland Park, Dashwood land for generations, until an old uncle's will ties the estate to John Dashwood's small son and leaves the three sisters very little.

What is the name of the Devonshire home the Dashwoods move to?

Barton Cottage is a snug house but, Austen jokes, a defective cottage: the roof is tiled, the shutters are not painted green and no honeysuckle covers the walls.

Who talks John Dashwood out of supporting his stepmother and half-sisters?

His wife Fanny whittles the deathbed promise down in a single conversation: from £3,000 to half that, then to an annuity, and finally to occasional presents of fish and game.

Which ailment is Marianne's proof that Colonel Brandon is too old for romance?

Rheumatism: he complains of a slight rheumatic feel in one shoulder on a cold, damp day, and sixteen-year-old Marianne decides that a man of thirty-five is past love.

Which mishap leads to Marianne's first meeting with Willoughby, who carries her home?

A sprained ankle: she falls running down a hillside, and a stranger out shooting with his two pointers picks her up without ceremony and carries her to the cottage.

On whom is Willoughby financially dependent, giving him an excuse to leave for London?

His elderly cousin Mrs Smith casts him off, then forgives him once he has married respectably, leaving him to reflect that honour would have made him both happy and rich.

Which sisters, relations of Lady Middleton's mother, come to stay with the Middletons?

Anne and Lucy Steele win over Lady Middleton by fussing over her spoilt children; Lucy then tells Elinor in confidence that she has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for four years.

Whom does Willoughby become betrothed to in London?

The rich Miss Grey has £50,000, and Willoughby later admits that the cold letter breaking with Marianne was his fiancée's wording, which he merely copied out.

Who was Colonel Brandon's teenaged ward, seduced and abandoned by Willoughby?

Eliza Williams is the daughter of the Colonel's lost first love, another Eliza; because he had the girl brought up in his care, local gossip has it that she must be his natural daughter.

Who blurts out the secret of Lucy's engagement to Edward?

Anne Steele, Lucy's elder sister, assumes the Ferrars family now likes Lucy too well to mind; instead Edward's sister falls into violent hysterics and both Steeles are turned out of her house.

What does Colonel Brandon offer Edward after he is disinherited?

A parsonage: the Delaford living is worth only about £200 a year, and Brandon asks Elinor to pass on the offer, so she must hand the man she loves the means to marry Lucy.

In the 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility, how does Marianne fall gravely ill?

Walking in the rain to gaze at Willoughby's house is the film's invention; in the novel Marianne only takes twilight walks through long wet grass and sits about in her wet shoes and stockings.

Whom does the scheming Lucy Steele finally marry?

Robert Ferrars, Edward's foppish younger brother, has just been handed the family fortune in Edward's place, so Lucy switches brothers and Edward is free to marry Elinor.

Family tradition holds that Austen's first draft of Sense and Sensibility took which form?

Epistolary (in letters): her sister recalled the story being read aloud to the family in that form before 1796, and from late 1797 Austen recast it as straight narrative.

In the novel Sense and Sensibility, unlike the 1995 film, how does Colonel Brandon settle his score with Willoughby?

With a duel: they meet by appointment, Willoughby to defend his conduct and Brandon to punish it, and both come away unwounded, so the affair never becomes public.

Marianne's great accomplishment is music; which art is Elinor's?

Drawing: when her painted screens are passed round at a London dinner, Mrs Ferrars barely looks before praising Miss Morton's painting instead, and Marianne snatches them back in her sister's defence.

What does 'sensibility' mean as Austen uses it?

Sensitivity or emotionality: it is Marianne's quality, so the sister a modern reader would call sensible, Elinor, is the one who stands for sense instead.

Which good-humoured widow, with both daughters married off, takes the two elder Dashwood sisters to London for the winter?

Mrs Jennings has, Austen says, 'nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world'; her teasing mortifies the sisters, yet she stays to nurse Marianne when the Palmers flee for fear of infection.

Where was Austen living when Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility?

Chawton: the cottage her brother Edward provided in 1809 gave her a settled home after years of moves, and she at once began readying her old manuscripts for the press.

Who stood to lose money if Sense and Sensibility failed to sell in 1811?

The author: Austen published on commission, so the risk was all hers, and it paid off when the first edition had sold out by mid-1813 and brought her a profit of £140.

In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor drily remarks that few people share Marianne's 'passion' for what?

Dead leaves: Marianne has just rhapsodised about watching them fall at Norland and mourned that now they are only swept away as a nuisance.

Isabelle de Montolieu's 1815 French version of Sense and Sensibility ends with Willoughby marrying whom?

Brandon's ward: Montolieu kills off Willoughby's wife in a carriage accident, has a pious relative shelter the girl and her child, and lets the repentant rake marry her.

Which instrument does Marianne play for the Middletons' guests soon after the Dashwoods reach Devon?

The pianoforte: only Colonel Brandon listens without noisy raptures, paying her 'the compliment of attention', and she respects him for it even while thinking him old.

Who directed the 1995 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility?

Ang Lee, a Taiwanese director making his first English-language film, seemed an unlikely choice for Austen, and he loosened up his British cast with tai chi.

Who wrote the screenplay for the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility and played Elinor?

Emma Thompson spent five years on her first screenplay without assuming she would star; it was the film's director who could not imagine anyone else as Elinor.

Which Oscar did the screenwriter and star of the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility win for it?

Best Adapted Screenplay made her the first person to win Oscars for both acting and writing, on a night when she was also up for Best Actress and lost to Susan Sarandon.

Which comedian rescued the nearly finished script of the 1995 Sense and Sensibility from its writer's crashed computer?

Stephen Fry, her old partner from the Cambridge Footlights and a keen computer buff, recovered the file when the screenplay seemed lost for good.

Which role did Kate Winslet actually audition for before winning Marianne in the 1995 Sense and Sensibility?

Lucy Steele was the small part she was sent up for at nineteen; her reading won her Marianne instead, and with it her first Oscar nomination.

Who played Colonel Brandon in the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility?

Alan Rickman had made his name playing villains such as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the film's screenwriter wrote in her diary that it was a thrill to see him show the 'extraordinary sweetness' in his nature.

Who played Willoughby in the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility?

Greg Wise met his future wife on the set: the film's screenwriter and star, whose character he never courts on screen.

A Jane Austen society complained that which star was too handsome to play Edward Ferrars in the 1995 Sense and Sensibility?

Hugh Grant: the screenwriter's published diaries record that someone from the society phoned the production company to protest that he was too good-looking for shy Edward.

Which future Downton Abbey star played Edward Ferrars in the BBC's 2008 Sense and Sensibility?

Dan Stevens, two years before Downton Abbey, played an Edward who is guarded and secretive for good reason: he has been privately engaged to another woman for four years.

Which present from Willoughby does Elinor persuade Marianne to turn down?

A horse: he has bred the mare himself and named her Queen Mab, but the Dashwoods have no stable, and keeping her would mean a second horse and a servant they cannot afford.

Which festival prize did the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility win, making its director the first two-time winner?

The Golden Bear came in Berlin in February 1996, the same month the Academy nominated the film for Best Picture while leaving its director off the Best Director list.

Which former Miss World plays the Marianne figure in Kandukondain Kandukondain, the 2000 Tamil film of Sense and Sensibility?

Aishwarya Rai plays Meenakshi, a young woman in love with Tamil poetry, and the film turns the Colonel into a war-wounded army major played by Mammootty.

Who adapted Sense and Sensibility as a three-part BBC serial in 2008?

Andrew Davies said people forget how young the heroines are, 'only 17 and 19', and promised a version more overtly sexual than earlier Austen dramas.

What is the title of Ben Winters's 2009 mashup parody of Sense and Sensibility?

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters keeps Austen's plot but gives Colonel Brandon a face full of tentacles and has Willoughby save Marianne from an octopus.

Which author brought the story into the present day in 2013 for The Austen Project?

Emma Tennant had earlier written a sequel, Elinor and Marianne, in Austen's original epistolary format.

What does Willoughby take from Marianne that convinces her watching younger sister the pair are engaged?

A lock of her hair: he cuts it off with her own scissors, kisses it and folds it into his pocket-book, yet it later turns out that the two were never engaged at all.

What illness does Marianne contract at Cleveland that nearly kills her?

Putrid fever is all the novel calls it, though scholars have suggested typhus; the apothecary's word 'infection' is enough to send the Palmers fleeing with their baby.

Which actress plays Elinor in Georgia Oakley's 2026 film of Sense and Sensibility?

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Elinor to Esmé Creed-Miles's Marianne; Creed-Miles announced her own casting on Instagram with a photograph of the two actresses' scripts side by side.

What distinguished the Hallmark Channel's 2024 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility?

Black actors played the main roles because the film was made for Hallmark's Mahogany brand, which centres Black stories; it kept Austen's Regency setting instead of updating it.

Which 2011 comedy retells Sense and Sensibility with two sisters sent to live with an aunt in East Los Angeles?

From Prada to Nada: the title is the plot, as two wealthy sisters find on their father's death that they are bankrupt and must give up the family mansion.

What is Edward Ferrars's foppish brother choosing at a London jeweller's when Elinor first sees him?

A toothpick-case: he keeps the sisters waiting a quarter of an hour while he debates its size, shape and ornaments, sparing them only three or four broad stares.

Which composer received a first Oscar nomination for scoring the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility?

Patrick Doyle, who had scored Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, also wrote the songs that Marianne sings on screen, so parts of his score are performed inside the story.

How did Edward Ferrars first come to know his secret fiancée?

He was her uncle's pupil for four years near Plymouth; Edward later blames the engagement on idleness, saying it would never have happened had he been given a profession.