Sense and Sensibility (film) Austen adaptation of all time, opining that Lee "offered an acute outsider's insight into Austen in this compelling 1995 interpretation of the book [and] Emma Thompson delivered a charming turn as the older, wiser, Dashwood sister, Elinor." Journalist Zoe Williams credits Thompson as the person most responsible for Austen's popularity, explaining in 2007 that "Sense and Sensibility" "is the definitive Austen film and that's largely down to her." In 2011, "The Guardian" film critic Paul Laity named it his favourite film of all time, partly because of its "exceptional screenplay, crisply and skilfully done.". Devoney Looser reflected on the film
Sense and Sensibility draft of the novel in the form of a novel-in-letters (epistolary form) perhaps as early 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". 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),