LoveReading Says
One of Rebecca Front's favourite books.
Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
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Mansfield Park Synopsis
The protagonist in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, a young girl who is raised in the house of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas. She ultimately falls in love with her cousin Edmund, the only one in the household who does not look down on her for her inferior social class. When Edmund starts to develop a relationship with his other cousin Mary who is already engaged, Fanny is seriously worried. However, her worries soon vanish when she realizes Mary's relationship with other men. In the absence of Sir Thomas, who has gone to visit his plantations in Antigua, the group of young cousins decide to perform a romantic play which enables Henry, Mary's brother, to flirt with Maria, one of Sir Thomas's daughters. Henry later tries to seduce Fanny in a playful way, yet he soon falls in love with her. When he proposes to her she rejects him for the multiple affairs that he often engages in. This disappoints Sir Thomas who thinks that Fanny should not miss the opportunity of such an advantageous match from a superior social class. Edmund eventually realizes Fanny's unique kindness and decides to marry her. By and large, Mansfield Park is an investigation of moral and social conventions of early nineteenth-century Britain. We've also included a concise and informative biography of Jane's works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.
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Jane Austen Press Reviews
This has been called Jane Austen's finest work but it is probably the least popular, due to the unsympathetic nature of her heroine, Fanny Price, who, it cannot be denied, is a smug little Goody Two-Shoes. This is the novel in which nasty Aunt Norris commits outrage after outrage and finally gets her come-uppance. But it also contains the incomparable Lady Bertram, idlest woman in fiction, and, in fat ill-tempered Pug, Jane Austen's only dog. Review by Ruth Rendell, whose crime novels include 'The Bridesmaid'.
(Kirkus UK)
About Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. After his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother; in 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire. Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until in May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on 18 July 1817.
As a girl Jane Austen wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. Her works were only published after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815-16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons. At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.
Fellow novelist Katharine McMahon on Jane Austen...
I can't not choose her. And whichever I've read last is always my favourite. The nuance of emotion, the understanding of human nature revealed by Austen constantly delights me. When I reread Sense and Sensibility recently, for the first time Elinor came across as quite prissy and destined to marry a rather spineless husband. I wonder if that was intended?
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