Jane Austen's most ambitious novel, Mansfield Park, has always generated debate. Austen herself noted that debate when she conducted a reader survey, recording her acquaintances' mixed reviews in a booklet she entitled "Opinions of Mansfield Park." Is this novel's dutiful heroine, Fanny Price, admirable? Or is she (as Austen's own mother asserted) "insipid"? Is Fanny actually the heroine, or does that title belong more properly to her rival, Mary Crawford? Does Fanny's uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, act as her benefactor, or as a domestic tyrant? In her notes and introduction to this final volume in Harvard's celebrated annotated Austen series, Deidre Shauna Lynch outlines the critical disagreements Mansfield Park has sparked and suggests that Austen's design in writing the novel was to highlight, not downplay, the conflicted feelings its plot and heroine can inspire.
Lynch also engages head-on with the novel's experimentalism, its technical virtuosity, and its undiminished capacity, two centuries later, to disturb and to move. Annotations clarify the nuances of Austen's language and explain the novel's literary allusions and its engagements with topical controversies over West Indian slavery and the conduct of Britain's war against France. The volume's numerous illustrations enable readers to picture the world Mansfield Park's characters inhabit, underscoring the novel's close attention to setting and setting's impact on character.
Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition opens up facets of the novel for even devoted Janeites while extending an open hand to less experienced readers. It will be a welcome addition to the shelf of any library.
Industry Reviews
Belknap's recently released annotated Mansfield Park, edited by [Deidre Shauna] Lynch, is a 532-page, colour-illustrated tour de force. -- Devoney Looser * Times Literary Supplement *
This is a coffee-table book that folks-Austen fans in particular-will actually read. -- Laurie Hertzel * Star Tribune *
Lynch here makes Austen's most divisive novel accessible, intriguing, and beautiful. She strikes a deft balance between information and analysis in her notes and with supporting documents that lend historical depth to the edition, while also linking the narrative to popular culture... With this edition, readers will want to stay with these characters for as long as possible. -- Emily Bowles * Library Journal (starred review) *
Deidre Lynch's edition of Mansfield Park weaves critical debate into an engaging argument about the subtlety and complexity of Fanny Price's character. The annotations are unfailingly lucid and succinct, calculated to stimulate both imagination and thought. -- Patricia Meyer Spacks, University of Virginia
Austenites will want to own this edition of Mansfield Park because they have previously been frustrated or maddened by the novel, and because they want to understand how and why to like it, how to get more out of it, how to comprehend its place within Austen's oeuvre. We are all lucky to find a scholar and critic of Deidre Lynch's caliber as an editor and guide. -- Katie Trumpener, Yale University
