Read it through once

_Elinor and Marianne_ was originally written about 1792. After the completion--or partial completion, for it was again revised in 1811--of _First Impressions_ (subsequently _Pride and Prejudice_), Miss Austen set about recasting _Elinor and Marianne_, then composed in the form of letters; and she had no sooner accomplished this task, than she began _Northanger Abbey_. It would be interesting to know to what extent she remodelled _Sense and Sensibility_ in 1797-98, for we are told that previous to its publication in 1811 she again devoted a considerable time to its preparation for the press, and it is clear that this does not mean the correction of proofs alone, but also a preliminary revision of MS. Especially would it be interesting if we could ascertain whether any of its more finished passages, _e.g._ the admirable conversation between the Miss Dashwoods and Willoughby in chapter x., were the result of those fallow and apparently barren years at Bath and Southampton, or whether they were already part of the second version of 1797-98. But upon this matter the records are mute. A careful examination of the correspondence published by Lord Brabourne in 1884 only reveals two definite references to _Sense and Sensibility_ and these are absolutely unfruitful in suggestion. In April 1811 she speaks of having corrected two sheets of 'S and S,' which she has scarcely a hope of getting out in the following June; and in September, an extract from the diary of another member of the family indirectly discloses the fact that the book had by that time been published. This extract is a brief reference to a letter which had been received from Cassandra Austen, begging her correspondent not to mention that Aunt Jane wrote _Sense and Sensibility._ Beyond these minute items of information, and the statement--already referred to in the Introduction to _Pride and Prejudice_--that she considered herself overpaid for the labour she had bestowed upon it, absolutely nothing seems to have been preserved by her descendants respecting her first printed effort. In the absence of particulars some of her critics have fallen to speculate upon the reason which made her select it, and not _Pride and Prejudice_, for her dÈbut; and they have, perhaps naturally, found in the fact a fresh confirmation of that traditional blindness of authors to their own best work, which is one of the commonplaces of literary history. But this is to premise that she _did_ regard it as her masterpiece, a fact which, apart from this accident of priority of issue, is, as far as we are aware, nowhere asserted. A simpler solution is probably that, of the three novels she had written or sketched by 1811, _Pride and Prejudice_ was languishing under the stigma of having been refused by one bookseller without the formality of inspection, while _Northanger Abbey_ was lying _perdu_ in another bookseller's drawer at Bath. In these circumstances it is intelligible that she should turn to _Sense and Sensibility_, when, at length--upon the occasion of a visit to her brother in London in the spring of 1811--Mr. T. Egerton of the 'Military Library,' Whitehall, dawned upon the horizon as a practicable publisher.