Editing Sense and Sensibility (section)

==Development of the novel==
Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in [[Epistolary novel|epistolary form]], perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old; or 1797, at age 21. She is said to have given it the working title ''Elinor and Marianne''. Later she changed the form to a narrative and the title to ''Sense and Sensibility''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Le Faye |first=Deirdre |title=Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels |location=London |publisher=Frances Lincoln Publishers |year=2002 |isbn=0-7112-1677-0 |page=154}}</ref>

Austen drew inspiration for ''Sense and Sensibility'' from other novels of the 1790s that treated similar themes, including Adam Stevenson's ''Life and Love'' (1785) which he had written about himself and a relationship that was not meant to be. [[Jane West (novelist)|Jane West]]'s ''A Gossip's Story'' (1796), which features one sister full of rational sense and another sister of romantic, emotive sensibility, is considered to have been an inspiration as well. West's romantic sister-heroine also shares her first name, Marianne, with Austen's. There are further textual similarities, described in a modern edition of West's novel.<ref>{{cite book |contributor-last=Looser |contributor-first=Devoney |contribution=Introduction |first=Jane |last=West |title=A Gossip's Story |editor1=Looser|editor1-first= Devoney |editor2=O'Connor |editor2-first=Melinda |editor3=Kelly|editor3-first=Caitlin |location=Richmond, Virginia |publisher=Valancourt Books |year=2015 |isbn=978-1943910151}}</ref>

Austen may have drawn on her knowledge of [[Warren Hastings]], the first [[Governor-General of India]], in her portrayal of [[Colonel Brandon]]. Just as Eliza Brandon was rumoured to be the Colonel’s love child, Hastings had been rumoured to be the biological father of Austen's cousin [[Eliza de Feuillide]]. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts ''Sense and Sensibility'' in the character of Colonel Brandon": both left for India at the age of seventeen; Hastings may have had an illegitimate daughter named Eliza; both Hastings and Brandon participated in a duel.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Walker |first1=Linda Robinson |title=Jane Austen, the Second Anglo-Mysore War, and Colonel Brandon's Forcible Circumcision: A Rereading of ''Sense and Sensibility'' |journal=Persuasions On-Line |date=2013 |volume=34 |issue=1 |url=http://jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol34no1/walker.html |access-date=6 June 2020 |publisher=Jane Austen Society of North America}}</ref>