Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is the third published novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen’s lifetime. The novel did not receive any public reviews until 1821. However, Mansfield Park is perhaps Austen’s most controversial novel due to its brief mention of the British slave trade, and the fact that Fanny’s uncle and benefactor, Sir Thomas, owns a plantation in the West Indies. Mansfield Park is an enormously complicated novel, even by the standards of Jane Austen, who creates characters and situations of unusual complexity in all her novels. Like other Austen novels, this one is concerned with a young woman trying to find her place in the social order.