Jane Austen was 41 when Sense and Sensibility became the first of her works to be published in 1811. She had, however, been writing for most of her life, and it was by no means her only work. Aside from early versions of this, and of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice, she had, from her early teens, been producing short, and often acerbic narratives – epistolary exchanges, dramas and stories. In these varied contexts she had explored the principles and extremes of the two positions which she embodies in Elinor and Marianne – sense on the one hand and sensibility on the other.
Austen’s Artifice presents these two mind-sets, and the patterns of the birth, growth and death of relationship they encounter in Jane Austen’s work, spiked with incidental, live piano music.
This script was compiled for its first full performance at Chawton House Library, as part of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Sense and Sensibility’s publication.
