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The Big Six

The Big Six. Jane Austen’s major works. Sense and Sensibility. Started: 1795; original title Elinor and Marianne (epistolary format) Published: 1811; sold out within two years Earned: £140 pounds ($8,000)

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The Big Six

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  1. The Big Six Jane Austen’s major works

  2. Sense and Sensibility • Started: 1795; original title Elinor and Marianne (epistolary format) • Published: 1811; sold out within two years • Earned: £140 pounds ($8,000) • Main Characters: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, Edward Ferrar, Colonel Brandon • Plot Summary: Two sisters learn the dangers of too much emotion. Also, a protest against placing too much value on income… “She was sensible &clever; but eager in every thing; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was every thing but prudent.”

  3. Pride and Prejudice • Started: October 1796; originally titled “First Impressions” • Published: 1813; Jane called it “my own darling Child” • Rejected at first, now most popular • Main Characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, George Wickham, Jane Bennet, Charles Bingley • Plot Summary: Five Bennet girls must find marriage, hope to find love. Austen lobbies for love above all. Family, fortune, and reputation all figure into the happiness equation. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

  4. Mansfield Park • Started: 1811 • Published: 1814; written as an adult • Innovations: foreshadows Dickens and Eliot; realism; ideological critique (praise of merit over inheritance); shows consequences of having many children; presents clergy more positively; angelic main character has no flaws; shows that patience is a virtue that gets rewarded • Main Characters: Fanny Price, Edmund Bertram • Plot Summary: good, poor girl grows up, marries good, parson cousin. “There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

  5. Emma • Started: 1814 • Published: 1815 • Main Characters: Emma Woodhouse • Plot Summary: rich young matchmaker fails at finding love for others; learns that marriage should be about love, not money or social status. “Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken…”

  6. Northanger Abbey • Started: 1798; originally Susan;; sold to a publisher in 1803 for 10 pounds; publisher never published it; brother bought it back in 1816 • Published: 1817, posthumously • Main Characters: Catherine Moreland, Henry Tilney • Plot Summary: Friendships are tested, but girl stays true to her values, gets the good guy in the end. Love triumphs over money once again. “Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.”

  7. Persuasion • Started: 1815 • Published: 1816, Posthumously • Innovations: most mature work; broadens scope of setting: goes to the sea; more inner revelations of both male and female characters; grim humor; more outspoken in her criticism of society • Main Characters: Anne Elliot, Captain Frederick Wentworth • Plot Summary: Heroine escapes class-conscious family to marry her true love; tells of regrets, second chances, recovery and hope. “When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort.”

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