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Jane Austen, Kathleen James-Cavan: Sense and Sensibility (EBook, 2001, Broadview Press) 5 stars

Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental …

I don't think I'd appreciated before now just how funny Austen could be. Among some highlights:

Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it. (p44).

His manners to them, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him. (p240)

Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings, and gave no intelligence to him. (p309)