Mansfield Park [Paperback]

Jane Austen turns her unerring eye on the concerns of English society at a time of great upheaval in this historical romance classic.

Mansfield Parkis named for the magnificent, idyllic estate that is home to the wealthy Bertram family and that serves as a powerful symbol of English tradition and stability. The novel’s heroine, Fanny Price—a “poor relation” living with the Bertrams—is acutely conscious of her inferior status and yet she dares to love their son Edmund—from afar. With five marriageable young people on the premises, the peace at Mansfield cannot last. Courtships, entertainments, and intrigues throw the place into turmoil, and Fanny finds herself unwillingly competing with a dazzlingly witty and lovely rival. As Margaret Drabble points out in her incisive Introduction, the house becomes “full of the energies of discord—sibling rivalry, greed, ambition, illicit sexual passion, and vanity,” and the novel grows ever more engrossing right up to Mansfield’s final scandal and the satisfying conclusion. Unique in its moral design and its brilliant interplay of the forces of tradition and change, Mansfield Park was the first novel of Jane Austen’s maturity.

With an Introduction by Margaret Drabble
and an Afterword by Julia Quinn“Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values.”—Virginia WoolfJane Austen(1775–1817) was born in Hampshire, England, to George Austen, a rector, and his wife, Cassandra. Like many girls of her day, she was educated at home, where she began her literary career by writing parodies and skits for the amusement of her large family. Although Austen did not marry, she did have several suitors and once accepted a marriage proposal, but only for an evening. Although Austen never lived apart from her family, her work shows a worldly and wise sensibililC3