'Mansfield Park' is "a Stoic book in that it speaks for stillness rather than movement, firmness rather than fluidity, arrest rather than change, endurance rather than adventure."

More varied in scene and conceived on a bigger scale than her earlier books, 'Mansfield Park' can be seen as an image of quiet resistance at the start of what was to be the most convulsive century of change in English history. In it Jane Austen draws on her cool irony and comic genius to full effect. Against her chosen backdrops, the story of the Crawfords, the Bertrams and Fanny Price, her quiet, suffering heroine, and their interlocking destinies, is played out with superb control, wit and profound psychological insight.