Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen is perhaps her most challenging and morally serious novel — the story of Fanny Price, the poor relation brought to live at the grand estate of Mansfield Park, whose quiet virtue and moral firmness are tested and ultimately vindicated by the events that unfold around her. Unlike Austen’s more obviously charming heroines, Fanny is still and watchful, her strength expressed not in wit but in integrity — a choice Austen makes deliberately and defends throughout. The novel’s concerns — with performance, theatricality, the colonial economy that underpins English wealth, and the relationship between moral seriousness and social grace — make it the subject of more critical debate than any other Austen work. Published in a beautiful new edition, this is a novel that rewards the reader who gives it the patience it asks for.