What to read after “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
On a trip to Florence, young Lucy Honeychurch meets George Emerson, whose frankness unsettles the strict English manners she was raised to respect. Back in England, she must choose between a safe, conventional engagement and the feelings she has been taught to ignore.
Elizabeth Bennet has little patience for the proud Mr Darcy, whose fortune and manners make him an easy target for her wit. Their sparring slowly gives way to a truer understanding as family scandal and society threaten to keep them apart.
Shy, penniless Fanny Price is raised at Mansfield Park as a poor relation, always aware of her place. Her only comfort is her cousin Edmund, whose attention shifts when the lively Mary Crawford arrives. Fanny must hold to her own judgment as the family's world of privilege and flirtation begins to unravel.
When Sophy Stanton-Lacy comes to stay with her cousins in London, she finds the household tangled in debts, broken engagements and bad tempers. Cheerful and managing, she sets out to arrange everyone's happiness, clashing with her proud cousin Charles along the way.
Linda Radlett grows up in an eccentric upper-class family and spends her youth chasing the grand romance she has read about. Her cousin Fanny watches Linda move through marriages, affairs and wartime Paris, learning what love actually costs.
A bored young dandy inherits a country estate and turns down the earnest love of his bookish neighbour, Tatyana. Years later they meet again in St Petersburg society, and their positions are reversed.
Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland in old New York society when May's cousin, the Countess Olenska, returns from Europe after leaving her husband. Newland and the Countess are drawn to each other, but the rules of their world demand that he marry May and hide what he feels.
Bridget Jones is thirty-something, single and determined to improve her life, recording every diet, cigarette and romantic disaster in her diary. Between her flirtatious boss and a stiff family friend, she tries to work out what she actually wants.
Becky Sharp, clever and poor, leaves school determined to climb London society by any means available. Beside her is her gentle friend Amelia, whose love for a vain soldier leads her toward ruin. The novel follows the two women through marriages, debts and reversals, always with an ironic eye on ambition.
Lady Calpurnia Hartwell has spent her life being proper and unremarkable. She draws up a list of scandalous things she longs to try and asks Gabriel St. John, the notorious Marquess of Ralston, to help her. As he escorts her through each escapade, an old acquaintance deepens into love.
Viola Astley is so painfully shy that her first London season feels like a trial. She dreams of a quiet vicar, but a compromising moment with the reclusive Duke of Wynter leaves her engaged to a man she barely knows. As Viola finds her voice, she discovers the duke is not the cold stranger society believes.
Practical Flora Poste, newly orphaned, moves in with her gloomy rural relatives at Cold Comfort Farm. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she sets about tidying their tangled lives, one absurd cousin at a time, in a comic send-up of romantic country novels.
Laurie locks eyes with a stranger through a bus window and spends a year searching for him, only to meet him again as her best friend's new boyfriend. Across ten years of friendship, missed chances and other relationships, the two circle a connection they are never free to act on.
Rachel Chu, an economics professor in New York, travels to Singapore for the summer wedding of her boyfriend's best friend. There she learns that Nick's family is one of the wealthiest in Asia, and that his mother has already judged her unsuitable. A comic look at money, family and the marriage market.
Valentine Layton, Duke of Malvern, bungles his proposal and his bride-to-be flees into the night. Her twin brother Bonny insists Valentine chase her to Dover, so the two set off together. On the road, Valentine begins to question everything he assumed about love, especially once an inn leaves them sharing a single bed.
Bathsheba Everdene inherits a farm and runs it herself. Three men want her: the steady shepherd Gabriel Oak, the wealthy neighbour Boldwood, and the dashing soldier Troy. Her choice and its consequences reshape all their lives in the farming country of Wessex.
In Verona, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet at a party and fall for each other before they learn that their families are sworn enemies. They marry in secret and try to escape the feud, but a chain of misunderstandings and violence drives them toward a tragic end.
In Werther's letters, a sensitive young artist arrives in a German town and quickly falls for Lotte, an engaging woman already promised to another man. His infatuation grows into obsession as he tries to reconcile his feelings with the life she has chosen.
On a sheep station in the Australian outback, Meggie Cleary grows up in the shadow of a family curse. She falls in love with Ralph de Bricassart, a priest whose ambition pulls him towards Rome, and the two stay bound to each other for decades by a love they can never openly have.
An ambitious young man from a poor family claws his way into high society, first through the church and then through his charm. Torn between two women and his own hunger for status, he risks everything. A novel about ambition, class and love.
Colonel Aidan Bedwyn promises a dying soldier that he will protect the man's sister. To honour that vow he marries Eve Morris in name only, keeping her home safe. What begins as a cold bargain between two strangers slowly softens into affection and love.
Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain writes her diary in a crumbling English castle where her family lives on almost nothing. When two wealthy American brothers arrive to claim the estate, love and money unsettle the household, and Cassandra grows up fast.
As teenagers Macy and Elliot spent every weekend trading books in a closet and slowly falling in love, until one night tore them apart. Eleven years later they meet again in San Francisco, and the friendship and heartbreak they buried come rushing back as they decide whether to try once more.
Olive, a third-year biology PhD student, kisses the first man she sees to convince her friend that her dating life is fine, and it turns out to be the famously severe Professor Adam Carlsen. To keep the story convincing, the two agree to fake a relationship, and their staged arrangement slowly becomes real.
Start with “A Room with a View”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Mansfield Park”: they are the closest to “Sense and Sensibility” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Sense and Sensibility” these are Comedy of Manners, Love Triangle, Slow Burn), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake”, “Say Yes to the Duke”, “One Day in December”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
