Mansfield Park

Jane Austen

Feb 2016 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

A shy young woman discovers her true power in this poignant love story from one of the world’s most cherished authors

The eldest of nine children born to a naval lieutenant with a meager pension, Fanny Price is sent to live with wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park. Only ten years old, she is nervous around her rich cousins and uncomfortable in their grand house. And as the years pass, Fanny comes to believe that she will never truly feel at home. Only Edmund Bertram makes life worth living.
 
He is the only one of her cousins who is kind to her, a gentle soul whom she has loved since childhood. But when the worldly and charismatic Crawford siblings, Henry and Mary, arrive from London and ensnare the Bertram family in a complicated web of romance and intrigue, Fanny worries that her relationship with Edmund will never be the same. To win his heart, she must keep her head—a task that becomes all the more difficult when her family pressures her to accept Henry Crawford’s unexpected marriage proposal.
 
Widely regarded to be Jane Austen’s first mature novel, Mansfield Park subtly critiques the snobbery of English society by celebrating the virtues of its unassuming yet profoundly compelling heroine.
 
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices. 
 

Ratings and reviews

Complex, yet very good. Shows how rigid the class (and race) systems were entrenched in English society then and still persists to some extent today. Also shows the addiction to Laudanum, an opium based drug used commonly among the upper classes; even Queen Victoria was rumored to partake of the drug on occasion! The lower classes were addicted to gin; the main character's father was an unemployed alcoholic with too many children; his wife had definitely married downward; hence the the thread that runs through the story. A good read (and film) nonetheless. I enjoyed the book more than the film, though.

Such an necessarily long book, definitely not on of Austen greater works, but still it IS a Jane Austen book. It was entertaining, smart and lovable, but it dragged on and on and I found it hard to like any of the characters including Fanny and Edmund.

Cute, but not Jane Austen's best work (Pride and Prejudice is, but you know what I'm getting at).

About the author

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist known for her fiction set among England’s landed gentry. She was the seventh of eight children and was educated mostly at home in Hampshire. Her best-known works include Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Although her novels, all of which were published anonymously, did not bring her fame during her lifetime, she is now one of the most widely read writers in the English language.