In recent years, Mansfield Park has come to be regarded as Austen's most controversial novel. It was published in two editions in her lifetime and here the 1814 and 1816 texts are fully collated for the first time. All the variants are included on the page, allowing readers to see the differences between the first edition and the second, which include some important amendments made by Jane Austen herself. Also included, with a brief note on Elizabeth Inchbald, is the text of Lovers' Vows, the play around which much of the plot of Mansfield Park revolves. The volume, first published in 2005, provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus.

Mansfield Park is Austen's darkest, and most complex novel. In contrast to the confident and vivacious heroines of Emma and Pride and Prejudice, its central character, Fanny Price, is a shy and vulnerable poor relation who finds the courage to stand up for her principles and desires. Fanny comes to live at Mansfield Park, the home of the wealthy Bertram family, and of Fanny's aunt, Lady Bertram. Though the family impresses upon Fanny her inferior status, she finds a friend in Edmund, the younger brother.Mansfield Park explores important issues such as slavery (the source of the Bertrams' wealth), the oppressive nature of idealized femininity, and women's education. This edition sheds light on these and other issues through its insightful introduction and wide-ranging appendices of contemporary documents.

This Guide traces the response toMansfield Parkfrom the opinions of Jane Austen's contemporaries, through nineteenth-century reviews and twentieth-century critical analyses, to the diverse readings of the novel available to the twenty-first century reader. The Guide selects the most useful and insightful of these and puts them in context, making available the range of critical debate on this important novel.

Supporting materials include an introduction, annotations, and a map."Contexts" includes contemporary materials on the slave trade, religion, conduct literature for women, and landscape design that illuminate this dark and often disturbing novel.nbsp; Elizabeth Inchbald's adaptation of Lovers' Vows (the play staged by the characters in Mansfield Park) is included, as are writings by Humphry Repton, Thomas Gisborne, Hannah More, and Mary Wollstonecraft, among others."Criticism" presents a superb selection of critical writing about the novel.The critics include Jan Fergus, Lionel Trilling, Alistair Duckworth, Nina Auerebach, Claudia L. Johnson, Joseph Litvak, Edward Said, B. C. Southam, and Joseph Lew.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.

What grounds our ethical choices in a modern world of competing versions of virtue and conflicting ideas of law? Constancy, Jane Austen''s cardinal virtue, provides a foundation for making such choices. Constancy and the Ethics of Jane Austen''s Mansfield Park offers a rigorous philosophical examination of the novel, the first book-length, close reading to do so. Joyce Kerr Tarpley begins with an introduction that provides a background for reading Austen''s ethics, noting her genius for synthesis, in particular her synthesis of ethical contexts. The book brings together classical thinkers (Plato and Aristotle) with Christian (Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante), and modern (Shaftesbury, Locke, and Adam Smith). While acknowledging these influences, Tarpley argues that constancy relies primarily on a Christian philosophical framework. She defines constancy and delineates its role in guiding ethical thinking. Relying on textual evidence from the novel and focusing on Austen''s heroine, Fanny Price, the first half of the book contrasts the Christian liberal education that fosters the development and practice of constancy with its secular utilitarian counterpart, which impedes its development and practice. The second half considers the two most important subjects for Christian liberal learning, beauty and truth. Tarpley delineates the dual role of constancy -- moral and intellectual -- to guide the heart''s pursuit of beauty and the mind''s pursuit of truth. Her argument contributes to the ongoing debate on the philosophy of literature, religion, ethics, and emotion.