Mansfield Park: The Collector's Edition

by Jane Austen, Janet Todd (Editor)

Overview

Many critics regard Mansfield Park as Austen's supreme achievement. It is a serious, even earnest work, but never dull, finding its comedy less in dialogue than in situation. It has wonderful set pieces including an outing to a grand house, aborted theatricals and a visit to a chaotic ménage. All Austen's novels are set during the French Wars, but Mansfield Park catches most clearly the anxious mood of a wartime nation unsure of its moral status. The heroine Fanny Price holds to principles against sophisticated laxness, but she is also self-deceiving as her principles jostle against her nature and youth. With the subtle irony that is her forte, Austen shows that integrity wins out but at a cost – and that virtue is neither easy nor always pleasurable to achieve. Prefaces and explanatory endnotes supplied by Janet Todd illuminate the cultural, historical and literary context, bringing Jane Austen's world to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009432665
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/08/2025
Series:	The Cambridge Jane Austen
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.23(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Janet Todd is a critic, editor, novelist and biographer of Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters, and Irish pupils. Her latest novel is Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden. Todd taught at Rutgers, UEA, Glasgow and Aberdeen. A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College.

Date of Birth:

December 16, 1775

Date of Death:

July 18, 1817

Place of Birth:

Village of Steventon in Hampshire, England

Place of Death:

Winchester, Hampshire, England

Education:

Taught at home by her father

Table of Contents

Preface; Mansfield Park; General Notes.