Mansfield Park: (Classics hardcover) (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

Part of Penguins beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Taken from the poverty of her parents home in Portsmouth Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncles absence in Antigua the Crawfords arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austens first mature work and with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity one of her most profound. Review Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values.--Virginia Woolf About the Author Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction set among the gentry have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English literature. She was born in Steventon rectory on 16th December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath and then to Chawton in Hampshire. She wrote from a young age and Pride and Prejudice was begun when she was twenty-two years old. It was initially rejected by the publisher she submitted it to and eventually published in 1813 after much revision. All four of her novels - Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) published in her lifetime were published anonymously. Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both 1817) were published posthumously. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter IAbout thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdonwith only seven thousand pounds had the good luckto captivate Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Parkin the county of Northampton and to be thereby raisedto the rank of a baronets lady with all the comfortsand consequences of an handsome house and large income.All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the matchand her uncle the lawyer himself allowed her to be at leastthree thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation;and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and MissFrances quite as handsome as Miss Maria did not scrupleto predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.But there certainly are not so many men of large fortunein the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.Miss Ward at the end of half a dozen years foundherself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norrisa friend of her brother-in-law with scarcely anyprivate fortune and Miss Frances fared yet worse.Miss Wards match indeed when it came to the pointwas not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily ableto give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield;and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugalfelicity with very little less than a thousand a year.But Miss Frances married in the common phraseto disoblige her family and by fixing on a lieutenantof marines without education fortune or connexionsdid it very thoroughly. She could hardly have madea more untoward choice. Sir Thomas Bertram had interestwhich from principle as well as pride-from a generalwish of doing right and a desire of seeing all that wereconnected with him in situations of respectabilityhe would have been glad to exert for the advantageof Lady Bertrams sister; but her husbands professionwas such as no interest could reach; and before hehad time to devise any other method of assisting theman absolute breach between the sisters had taken place.It was the natural result of the conduct of each partyand such as a very imprudent marriage almost always produces.To save herself from useless remonstrance Mrs.