Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire:
A few years ago, there were "group reads" of Mansfield Park on two different listservs--one on Austen-L, the listserv hosted by McGill University, owned and managed by Michael Walsh; the other on Litalk-L, the listserv hosted by Middle Tenessee State University, owned and managed by Elvira Casal. The interested reader will find my essay-postings written during more than one read and discussion or thread on Mansfield Park below. I have also included some of the essay-postings I wrote while a group of us also on Austen-l and Janeites read Austen criticism together. As with all the other group conversation and single essays I have placed on the Net, I have altered the postings slightly so as to make for continuity and have occasionally rearranged them or rewritten a header so the reader can follow the conversation as one would a story. Read as a series they form a close reading of Mansfield Park for the common reader and against a scholarly critical background.
For an excellent edition of Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows based on the 5th edition (1798), click here; and for the calendar which undergirds the patterning and structure of the plot-line of Mansfield Park, click here.
For two reviews of the 1999 film adaptations of Mansfield Park by Patricia Rozema click here.
