Mansfield Park: A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

Jane Austen

Aug 2022 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Lydia Wilson, Bryan Dick, Tom Mothersdale, Tala Gouveia, Janice Acquah, and Full Cast

About this audiobook

A captivating BBC radio dramatisation of Jane Austen's most overlooked novel

Sent away from her poverty-stricken parents in Portsmouth to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, nine-year-old Fanny Price is abruptly transplanted to a new, luxurious home: Mansfield Park. Overwhelmed by the grandeur of her surroundings, she feels out of place - and as she grows up, her spoiled cousins, Tom, Maria and Julia, never let her forget her humble beginnings. Only her cousin Edmund treats her with kindness, and the two become close companions.

But their lives are turned upside down when Sir Thomas goes away to visit his sugar plantation in the West Indies - and the charismatic Crawfords, Henry and Mary, arrive on the scene. Glamorous, attractive and flirtatious, they shake up the entire Bertram family - and leave Fanny grappling with emotions she's never felt before...

In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen gives us her subtlest and most unusual heroine: a displaced child, shaped by family and adversity, who becomes a quietly resolute young woman with an unshakeable moral code. This enthralling dramatisation focusses on the precariousness of Fanny's life - as a poor relation, unmarried, and living on an estate funded by sugar and slavery - and follows her as she navigates this high-stakes world with courage and conviction.

Production credits
Written by Jane Austen
Adapted by Clara Glynn
Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane
Directed by Bruce Young

Fanny Price - Lydia Wilson
Edmund Bertram - Bryan Dick
Mary Crawford - Tala Gouveia
Henry Crawford - Tom Mothersdale
Mrs Norris/Mrs Grant - Janice Acquah
Lady Bertram - Madeleine Worrall
Tom Bertram/William Price - Joshua Riley
Sir Thomas - John Hollingworth
Mr Rushworth- Samuel Valentine
Maria Bertram - Faith Alabi
Julia Bertram - Hollie Burgess


First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10-17 July 2022

© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

About the author

Jane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty-two years old. It was originally called First Impressions and was initially rejected by the publishers and only published in 1813 after much revision. She published four of her novels in her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were both published posthumously in 1818.