Mansfield Park - (Signet Classics) by Jane Austen (Paperback)

About the Book

"Mansfield Park" encompasses not only Jane Austen's great comedic gifts and her genius as a historian of the human animal, but her personal credo as well--her faith in a social order that combats chaos through civil grace, decency, and wit. Revised reissue.

Book Synopsis

In a novel filled with drama, greed, vanity, passion, and vulnerability, Jane Austen turns her unerring eye on the concerns of English society in this historical romance classic.

"Every moment had its pleasure and its hope."

Fanny Price has grown up acutely conscious of her inferior status as a "poor relation" living with her wealthy cousins, the Bertram family. Yet as she enters womanhood, she dares to love their youngest son, Edmund--from afar. Secret longings aside, there is peace at the Bertrams' idyllic estate, until the handsome and charming Crawford siblings arrive. Soon, Fanny finds herself unwillingly competing with the dazzling, witty Mary for Edmund's affections--and is shocked to acquire a determined new suitor of her own. With five marriageable young people embroiled in courtships, entanglements, and intrigues, it's only a matter of time before scandal reveals the true feelings of all the residents at Mansfield Park.

Unique in its moral design and its brilliant interplay of the forces of tradition and change, Mansfield Park is one of Austen's most complex and controversial works.

Includes an Introduction by Margaret Drabble
and an Afterword by Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton series

Review Quotes

"Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values."--Virginia Woolf

About the Author

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Hampshire, England, to George Austen, a rector, and his wife, Cassandra. Like many girls of her day, she was educated at home, where she began her literary career by writing parodies and skits for the amusement of her large family. Although Austen did not marry, she did have several suitors and once accepted a marriage proposal, but only for an evening. Although Austen never lived apart from her family, her work shows a worldly and wise sensibility. Her novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published together posthumously in 1818.

Margaret Drabble is the highly acclaimed novelist, biographer, and editor of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her novels include The Gates of Ivory, The Seven Sisters, and The Red Queen. She lives in London.

Julia Quinn is the New York Times bestselling author of eighteen historical romance novels, all of which take place in early-nineteenth-century Great Britain. She is the recipient of the RITA Award, romance's highest honor, and is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges.