• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mansfield Park: (Starbooks Classics Editions)

Mansfield Park: (Starbooks Classics Editions)

Paperback

Classic Fiction

ISBN10: 1500437336
ISBN13: 9781500437336
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Jul 7 2014
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.34
Height: 0.93 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
--- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is a novel by Jane Austen, written at Chawton Cottage between February 1811 and 1813. It was published in May 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen's two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. When the novel reached a second edition in 1816, its publication was taken over by John Murray, who also published its successor, Emma.

Literary significance and criticism

Mansfield Park is the most controversial of Austen's major novels. Regency critics praised the novel's wholesome morality, but many modern readers find Fanny's timidity and disapproval of the theatricals difficult to sympathise with and reject the idea (made explicit in the final chapter) that she is a better person for the relative privations of her childhood. Jane Austen's own mother thought Fanny insipid, and many other readers have found her priggish and unlikeable. Other critics point out that she is a complex personality, perceptive yet given to wishful thinking, and that she shows courage and grows in self-esteem during the latter part of the story. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin, who is generally rather critical of Fanny, argues that it is in rejecting obedience in favour of the higher dictate of remaining true to her own conscience that Fanny rises to her moment of heroism. But Tomalin reflects the ambivalence that many readers feel towards Fanny when she also writes: More is made of Fanny Price's faith, which gives her the courage to resist what she thinks is wrong; it also makes her intolerant of sinners, whom she is ready to cast aside.

The story contains much social satire, targeted particularly at the two aunts.

114 different editions

Also available

Also in

Classic Fiction