Mansfield Park (Collector's Library)

Mansfield Park is a novel about town and country, surface dazzle and lasting values. Fanny Price, a poor relation of the wealthy Bertram family, is brought up at their country house and falls in love with Edmund, their younger son. Their apparently settled life is torn apart by the arrival of the worldly Crawfords. Mary Crawford sets her cap at Edmund; her brother Henry proposes to Fanny, who loathes him for toying with her cousins, the daughters of the house. With her usual psychological insight and minute attention to detail, Jane Austen paints an irresistibly lifelike portrait of shifting values and split loyalties. At its center is Fanny, a young woman of principle who fights to find a place for herself in a world where she is both neglected and hounded. Both a penetrating account of individual motives and a portrayal in miniature of Jane Austen's age, Mansfield Park remains as fresh today as when it was written.