CHAPTER II

Jane Austen

At ten, Fanny Price is taken from her crowded, noisy home in Portsmouth to be raised at Mansfield Park, the grand estate of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Timid, overlooked and reminded daily that she is the poor relation, she finds a friend only in her cousin Edmund. When Sir Thomas sails for Antigua and the fashionable Henry and Mary Crawford arrive from London, the household comes loose: private theatricals, flirtations, and a courtship Fanny wants no part of. She watches it all, and refuses to be moved. Austen's most serious novel, and still her most argued-over.