Of the many such far fetchings, the following can be cited — from “Mansfield Park” — when Fanny is sent back to her family in Portsmouth to mend her ways. The year 2016 belonged to Shakespeare; 2017 is Jane Austen’s, the 200th anniversary of her premature death. e. far more into romantic notions than what was good for me, so the chapter has special interest to me. I was also not sold on Kelly’s decision to open each chapter with a short fictional section based on Austen’s letters.

And that is before we even get on to the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth that were implicit in any marriage plot at a time where “almost every family had a tale of maternal death to tell”. Doesn’t the plot turn on his pained understanding of the exact situation of the relatively impoverished Miss Bates? However, she totally disregards his next words – ‘A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me’(4) – indicating that he was being sarcastic and most definitely in his right mind and not drunk. The brilliance of the passage from which she quotes is that it is filtered through Anne’s consciousness, mingling her shrewdness with her delusory self-mortification. Kelly shows us that the novels were about nothing more or less than the burning political questions of the day.Could Lady Catherine really be a sensible person to appoint Mr Collins to the living at her disposal and then actually welcome his irksome company? There is also the matter of how she is incredibly critical of anything Austen related that isn't 100% guaranteed to be true (usually life events), but then begins each chapter with a fictionalized account of a moment in her life.

Either hire a British narrator or let the American one just speak in her own voice, this switching to a really uncomfortable British accent every time a quote comes up is incredibly distracting.After all, Pride and Prejudice was originally described as being ‘by the author of Sense and Sensibility’(1) not the authoress. The very name of the book – Mansfield – links the book to Lord Mansfield whose judgement ‘removed the practical basis’(2) on which slavery rested, and the hated Mrs Norris shares her name with a notorious slave trader. The book is split up into sections following each of her published novels, as well as one concerning her life, and her death. I really feel Helena does provide plenty of information I hadn't previously considered at all, there ARE secrets that I, someone pretty darn interested in Jane, was surprised to read from Helena.