The first printing of Mansfield Park was a commercial success, with 1,250 copies selling out within six months. John Murray later "expressed astonishment that so small an edition of such a work should have been sent into the world" (Gilson p. 49). Austen’s third published novel represents a departure from Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) in both tone and structure. Significantly, it is also the first of her works to be fully drafted at Chawton Cottage, the living offered to Austen, her sister Cassandra, and her mother by Edward Austen Knight. Edward was Jane’s brother, who as a child had been adopted by wealthy relatives, and this good fortune allowed him to offer his mother and sisters the financial and domestic security they’d been lacking since his father’s death in 1805. This stability would coincide with what was arguably the most productive period of Jane Austen’s life.

Austen herself deemed Pride and Prejudice “too light & bright & sparkling” in a letter to her sister Cassandra, though the earnestness of this appraisal is debatable (Chawton 77). Still, she created a very different sort of novel through Mansfield Park and its heroine, Fanny Price. When considering this stylistic departure, it is worth noting that Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) were initially drafted between 1795-98, when Austen was in her early 20s. These works were then redrafted between 1810-12, when the author was in her 30s and living in comfort at Chawton. “Mansfield Park has a recorded gestation and composition period of three some three years, from February 1811 to mid-1813,” Kathryn Sutherland states, “which if correct.mes ans that for some months in 1811 she had three novels on the go” (Sutherland p. 124). That Austen was juggling three novels which would be published in the span of four years is extraordinary, and it is perhaps natural that Mansfield Park would represent something of a fresh start once she saw Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice safely with the printer.

Though it sold well, Mansfield Park didn’t receive any public reviews until 1821. Indeed, while it is one of Austen’s most textually and thematically complex novels, it was frequently overlooked by critics and scholars alike. This changed somewhat in 1923, when Robert Chapman published the first scholarly edition of Austen's works. (Incidentally, this was also the first scholarly edition of any English novelist to be produced.) The Chapman text has remained the basis for all subsequent editions of Austen's works, and it was Chapman who decided to append Elizabeth Inchbald’s play Lovers’ Vows (1798) to Mansfield Park “thereby crediting it with a unique intertextual status within his edition and determining its seeming compulsory significance for subsequent critical readings of the novel through the twentieth century” (Sutherland 32). Lovers Vows, itself an adaptation of August von Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe (1780), address themes of extramarital sex and illegitimate birth, and it is performed by the characters of Mansfield Park as a sort of amateur theatrical meant to innocently pass the t.mes . With her trademark wit and skill, through allusions to Lovers’ Vows Austen managed to introduce deeply subversive themes into the most respectable drawing rooms of Regency England.

Mansfield Park takes Austen’s readers far outside of England as well. In his edition, Chapman failed to—or perhaps chose not to—draw attention to the “West Indian property” of Sir Thomas Bertram, the patriarch, and somet.mes s villain, of the narrative (Mansfield Park, Chapter I). Bertram’s “strange business…in America” also goes without.mes ntion (Chapter XII). For an author who is often criticized for the narrowness of her scope—for confining her novels to comfortable English homes—Mansfield Park demonstrates just how broad her view was, and how deep her understanding of Britain’s interests beyond its shores. In fact, Fanny Price is originally from Portsmouth, and is taken in by her uncle Sir Thomas, when she’s a child. Through the ebbs and flows of the narrative, Fanny is sent back to Portsmouth as a sort of punishment, but Austen would have her readers see that there is something essential in this setting. In Austen’s lifet.mes , just as it is now, Portsmouth was the base for the Royal Navy, and a city actively engaged in trade. Two of Austen’s brothers joined the navy at an early age, and the Napoleonic Wars (May 1803-November 1815) formed the geopolitical backdrop for most of her adult life. By juxtaposing the setting of Portsmouth with that of Mansfield Park, Austen is clearly demonstrating that there is a very real world that lays beyond the boundaries of great estates. And with the line “‘Why, you know, Sir Thomas’s means will be rather straitened if the Antigua estate is to make such poor returns’,” uttered by Mrs. Norris, who is supported by Sir Thomas, Austen is exposing her readers to the slave trade, and exactly the sort of labor and commerce that is necessary to support the Mansfield Parks of England.

Thus, Mansfield Park stands as one of the greatest achievements of the 19^th century, and such a remarkable copy—untouched since its publication—is an extraordinary survival.

REFERENCES:

Garside and Schöwerling 1814:11; Gilson A6; Keynes 6; Sadleir 62c; Sutherland, Kathryn (ed.), The Chawton Letters. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2018; Sutherland, Kathryn, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxford: Oxford university Press, 2005

PROVENANCE:

Augusta(?) Charteris (contemporary ownership signature to each title)