Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form) perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old, or 1797, at age 21, and is said to have given it the title Elinor and Marianne. She later changed the form to a narrative and the title to Sense and Sensibility.[5]
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'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.[6]
Austen may have drawn on her knowledge of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, in her portrayal of Colonel Brandon. 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.[7]
