Date: 26 October 2025
Location: Bob & Linda
About a dozen Bookers met to discuss Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. We selected the book in order to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, and we picked Mansfield Park mainly because this is one of her few novels that most of us had not read.
Unfortunately, it is still un-read by most of us: only four Bookers read the entire book.
It is interesting to note how this book has fared over the years. At one time it was thought to be her ‘best’ work, but nowadays most people do not agree with that. In fact, it is probably her least popular book, and it is definitely her most complex and serious novel.
The heroine, Fanny Price, is very different from Austen’s other major protagonists. She is shy and reserved without the spunk of, say, Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. Also, Austen seemed to go out of her way to create sentences requiring much more patience and active ‘participation’ from the reader than we normally find today.
Personally, I have always been in awe of Austen and her ability to describe the society and gentrified world of her day and to create characters that we have come to adore. I am glad to have read Mansfield Park, but I have found her other novels to be more enjoyable.
— Bob