Sense and Sensibility follows the story of two sisters Eleanor and Marianne whose father sadly passes away meaning their estate is inherited by their half brother John Dashwood. With a severely reduced income they rely on the charity of their mother's cousins the Middletons and take up a cottage in Devonshire. The sisters experience love, romance and heartbreak. Eleanor represents sense and Marianne sensibility (a now mostly disused word meaning the quality of being able to appreciate and respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences). 

 

"It is a clever novel. ... tho' it ends stupidly, I was much amused by it" Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

 

"I think Marianne & me are very like in disposition, that certainly I am not so good, the same imprudence, etc" 

Princess Charlotte Augusta