Product Description

First published in 1814, this is a study of three families - the Bertrams, the Crawfords and the Prices - in which Jane Austen uses the unlikely heroine, Fanny Price, to explore the social and moral values by which these families' lives are ordered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1080869 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Mansfield Park of the title, a magnificent, idyllic estate which is home to the wealthy Bertram family, stands as a bastion of English tradition and stability. The novel's heroine, Fanny Price, is a "poor relation" living with the Bertrams, acutely conscious of her inferior status and yet daring to love their son Edmund--but from afar. However, 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 critic Margaret Drabble has pointed out, the house becomes "full of the energies of discord--sibling rivalry, greed, ambition, illicit sexual passion, and vanity," and the novel becomes ever more engrossing as it builds to Mansfield's final scandal and, finally, a satisfying conclusion. Unique in its moral design and brilliant interplay of the forces of tradition and change, Mansfield Park was the first novel of Jane Austen's maturity, and the first in which the author turned her unerring eye on the concerns of English society at a time of great upheaval.

About the Author
Edited by James Kinsley. With a new bibliography and introductory essay by Marilyn Butler, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge

Customer Reviews

What can I say... It's Jane Austen!
Fanny is not the best heroine I have ever seen... But the book is beautifully written, just like all of Austen's novels. Worth a read!

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
A thoroughly good read for any fan of the author, this is Jane Austen at her best. A delightful story of romance and society, Mansfield Park is one of of the classics!