This engaging story of two attractive and mutually devoted sisters was first published in 1811. Romantic Marianne with her unrestrained enthusiasms, which lead to disillusionment and despair, makes a perfect foil to the unselfish Elinor, who brings a quiet self-control to her own heartbreak. The sentimental education of the two heroines is conducted with a fine regard for all the varying shades of romantic attraction, and in the end it is Marianne who makes a prudent marriage and Elinor who is united to the man she has loved from the beginning.