Jane Austen's complex tale of social class and morality, now in a collectible Deluxe Edition celebrating the 250th anniversary of the author's birth Shy and penniless Fanny Price is brought up on her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate, Mansfield Park, as an act of charity. Sir Thomas also owns land— and benefits from the labor of enslaved people— in the Caribbean colony of Antigua. Fanny is miserable until her kind cousin Edmund Bertram takes her under his wing. Having secretly fallen in love with him, Fanny suffers severely when his head is turned by the captivating Mary Crawford. Fanny’s quiet fortitude makes Mansfield Park one of Austen’s most psychologically astute novels. Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, a small village in Hampshire, England. As a girl, she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances. She lived with her family in Steventon until her father, a clergyman in the Church of England, retired in 1801. After his death, in 1805, she, her mother, and her sister did not have a settled home until 1809, when they moved to Chawton, Hampshire. There she was extraordinarily productive, revising three novels and writing three more from scratch. Published during her lifetime were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Austen died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, where she was receiving medical treatment, and was buried in that city’s cathedral. Two more novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion , were published posthumously in 1817 with a biographical notice by her brother Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship. She also left two earlier compositions: a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan , and an unfinished novel, The Watsons . At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon , a fragmentary draft of which survives. Juliette Wells is Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College, where she is active in outreach relating to the library’s distinguished Jane Austen Collection. She is the author of three histories of Austen’s readers and fans, most recently A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist . For Penguin Classics, she edited the 200th-anniversary deluxe editions of Austen’s Emma and Persuasion . She was guest co-curator for the Morgan Library & Museum’s 2025 exhibition A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 . Chapter I About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon,with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luckto captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park,in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raisedto the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comfortsand consequences of an handsome house and large income.All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match,and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at leastthree thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation;and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and MissFrances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scrupleto predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.But there certainly are not so many men of large fortunein the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, foundherself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris,a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely anyprivate fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse.Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point,was not contemptible: Sir Thomas being happily ableto give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield;and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugalfelicity with very little less than a thousand a year.But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase,to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenantof marines, without education, fortune, or connexions,did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have madea more untoward choice. Sir Thomas Bertram had interest,which, from principle as well as pride—from a generalwish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that wereconnected with him in situations of respectability,he would have been glad to exert for the advantageof Lady Bertram's sister; but her husband's professionwas such as no interest could reach; and before hehad time to devise any other method of assisting them,an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place.It was the natural result of the conduct of each party,and such as a very imprudent marriage almost always produces.To save herself from useless remonst