"Mansfield Park" - the Basics Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mrs Norris

In the first chapter, the two younger sisters are referred to by their first names, Miss Maria (who became Lady Bertram) and Miss Frances (who married Mr Price). Mrs Norris is referred to as Miss Ward. This follows the contemporary convention of referring to the eldest (or elder) brother or sister by their surname, and the others by their first names. In the same way, during the party's journey to Sotherton, Maria is referred to as "Miss Bertram", as opposed to Julia, the younger sister, and elsewhere "Mr Bertram" is understood to refer to Tom, not the younger Edmund. Likewise, in "Pride and Prejudice", Miss Bennet would refer to Jane, Miss Elliot to Elizabeth (Anne's elder sister in "Persuasion") and Miss Dashwood to Elinor in "Sense and Sensibility".

The end of the last-named novel in fact centres around this very convention. When the Dashwoods' manservant Thomas announces to them that "Mr Ferrars is married", he means the younger brother Robert. However, because he ignores the custom, Mrs Dashwood and her two daughters all assume that he means Edward, the elder, and Elinor's sweetheart. (If this needed confirming, he does so virtually in his next breath by saying that his new bride is Lucy Steele, the one to whom Elinor knows Edward secretly proposed in an idle moment some time ago, an engagement he is honour-bound to keep - thus illustrating another convention that only the lady can break the engagement.) This results in Elinor's question near the end of the book about the health and whereabouts of Mrs [Edward] Ferrars, and his confused reply concerning his mother, before the whole misunderstanding is so beautifully cleared up.

Does this episode, however, raise the same question in your mind as it does in mine: that Jane Austen for once had to contrive an unlikely circumstance in order to make the plot work out the way she needed it to? Just how probable is it that the servant would not know, or would forget, this common convention? It would be the equivalent of someone today accidentally calling a "Miss" a "Mrs", or even of them not knowing the difference. I can't remember another instance of this convention being ignored anywhere else in Jane Austen's whole oeuvre.

Answer: Drawing and music

After marriage, a woman's accomplishments, having served their purpose of enticing and beguiling men, were often given up. In "Sense and Sensibility", Lady Middleton no longer practiced her beloved music, in which she was quite proficient, after her marriage, while the recently wed Mrs Elton in "Emma" fears that the same fate will befall her - as it has several other married women she knows.

Mrs Norris is about as kind about Fanny as she gets in the novel, excusing her deficient accomplishments to her other nieces before saying that it is well that she (Fanny) shouldn't be that well educated because "it is desirable that there should be a difference" between them.

Sir Thomas echoes this last sentiment exactly: "as to the distinction proper to be made between the girls as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my daughters the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember that she is not a Miss Bertram. I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorise in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals. Their rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will always be different. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of conduct." So there we have his priority: the primacy of "rank, fortune, rights and expectations".

Patronising so-and-so! But, like his profilgate son Tom, he comes to realise the error of this position, and of Fanny's true worth, at the end of the novel - at the cost of incalculable damage to his family.

Answer: The White House

She takes this house because it is "the smallest habitation which could rank as genteel among the buildings of Mansfield parish", specifically in order to avoid being asked to take Fanny once the Bertrams have finished doing their stint at looking after her - which is what they think the arrangement was, as originally suggested by the odious Mrs Norris, who is expert at getting other people to do the right thing and is equally efficient at getting out of the same obligation herself.

Wadda prize cow!

Answer: James

His mother identifies him thus during the party's visit to Sotherton.

The first names of several of Jane Austen's characters remain elusive. To me, the most delightful evasion is Mr Knightley, whom Emma says she will only call once by his first name, George, on their wedding day.

Answer: prison

Mr Rushworth is evidently a man of impulse. His recent mania for improvement will no doubt be supplanted by an even more recent passion for something else - acting, maybe?

Improvements to properties were all the rage in the century leading up to Jane Austen's time. In the early eighteenth century, the taste for formal, symmetrical Baroque gardens began to be replaced by a desire for something felt to be more natural. Charles Bridgeman (d.1738) (inventor of among other things the ha-ha, or sunken fence, referred to in "Mansfield Park") and William Kent (d.1748) developed this trend, which culminated in the work of Lancelot "Capability" Brown (d.1783). He swept away what he saw as the artificial designs of the seventeenth century and replaced them with "nature perfected", something that looked as if it had always been there without human intervention, although the effect was as carefully planned as that of any formal garden. His "improvements" were certainly controversial. Some contemporaries marvelled at his achievements, while others wondered (given that the result was supposed to look quite "natural") why he just didn't leave things as they were, or even decried the destruction of the great gardens and their replacement with "mere" lawns. Yet others, advocates of the "picturesque" style, criticised his "bland", "unnatural" curves and demanded more in the way of rugged character. This paralleled the contemporary growth of interest in wild landscapes.

Humphry Repton (d.1818) was Brown's successor, and reintroduced some of the formal features discarded by Brown. In particular, he separated the house from the garden by such devices as terraces and flower gardens. One thing that both would have frowned on would have been avenues of trees, which they would have considered as being too "artificial" (in the modern sense of "contrived", as opposed to the 18th-century one of "well-constructed"). It is for such an avenue at Sotherton that Fanny mourns when it is threatened by the "improver's" axe. In particular, Repton advocated chopping holes in the middles of avenues of trees in order to reveal the vistas beyond. Mr Rushworth certainly thinks that Repton would have the avenue down in order to open up the view.

Answer: During the reign of James II

The house was originally built during Elizabeth's time, the chapel only being added later. Fanny is disenchanted by the plain and modern look of the chapel, and within its sacred precincts Mary lampoons the profession of clergyman - before discovering that her beloved Edmund is destined for that very profession. Oops!

Answer: Henry Crawford

Henry is first put forward by Julia Bertram (part of her rivalry with her sister for his affections, no doubt), and her suggestion is quickly taken up by her sister Maria and by Mrs Grant. After a suitably polite demurral, Henry accedes to Mr Rushworth's own request along those lines. This possibly suggests Mr Rushworth's ignorance: he thinks that being a family friend qualifies the amateur Henry as the equal of the foremost landscape designer in the country.

Incidentally, it might be thought a little unrealistic of Jane Austen to hire the nation's leading expert in the field for an unknown like Mr Rushworth. The man has, however, possibly the greatest income of the vast range represented in her novels. His £12,000 a year exceeds Mr Darcy's £10,000 - and the latter is referred to by Mr Collins as "one of the most illustrious personages in this land". Even allowing for hyperbole, it is quite obvious that Darcy is very rich indeed. If he could have afforded Repton (which he doubtless could have), so much the more could Mr Rushworth. And while both Repton and Brown's clients included some of the country's wealthiest aristocrats, the bulk of the former's work was on smaller estates. A Mr Rushworth would sit quite comfortably in his client portfolio.

Answer: The Dog

One of Fanny's many delights is that she is so appreciative of the natural world. This might seem unusual for Jane Austen, who is usually thought of as dealing almost exclusively with the doings of her fellow homo sapiens sapiens, but the rhythms of nature are in the background of all her works, and in this one they definitely come to the fore thanks to the heroine.

There are several points in the novel that reveal her as a true nature-lover, revelling in the beauties of seasonal changes, in the night sky and landscapes, both in interaction with humans and for their own sake. With the significant exception of Edmund, she's the only one who has this appreciation of nature on its own terms rather than simply as an adjunct - or an irritant - to human affairs.

Answer: violin

This is Fanny's first ball. According to Mary Crawford, she should now be "out" - i.e. be on display at balls in order to catch a husband with her "accomplishments" - which will probably be discarded after matrimony.

Jane Austen's attitude to servants is very interesting. It ranges from their active participation in the story, as when in "Sense and Sensibility" the servant reveals that "Mr Ferrars" is to be married to Lucy Steele, to Anne Elliot in "Persuasion" not even noticing which servant it is that opens her friend Mrs Smith's door to let her in (she "observed no one in particular"), through Mrs Rushworth senior's maidservant in "Mansfield Park", who threatens Maria with exposure when the latter runs off with Henry Crawford. (The Dashwood's manservant's mistake in informing them of "Mr Ferrar's" marriage in "Sense and Sensibility" is crucial to the unfolding of the plot towards the end of the book.)

Answer: Tom Bertram

It's Tom's friend Mr Yates' acting experiences at Ecclesford that fires his thespian enthusiasm, which is only possible because Sir Thomas is away, and everyone knows that he wouldn't allow it if he were there. When he does come back, he acts PDQ to get rid of any evidence of staging and sets and get his house back to its accustomed tranquillity. Tom's almost facetious rationalisations explaining how his father would in fact approve of the play are no more than the most patently transparent excuses for doing what he wants to do anyway.

This is of a piece with his character as it has already been revealed to us, most notably and unfeelingly in his glib justifications to himself of his profligacy, which has robbed his younger brother Edmund "perhaps for life, of more than half the income which ought to be his" - as his father has quite rightly, and equally as ineffectually, pointed out to him.

Answer: "Two days" away

It's interesting that projected performances of "Lover's Vows" are twice cut short, once at Ecclesford (offstage, as it were) and once at Mansfield. Discuss.

Answer: Tom Bertram

Fanny refuses, and Mrs Grant herself is eventually persuaded by Mary Crawford to take the part.

Incidentally, this thing people have about Fanny's disapproval of the play reflecting Jane Austen's disapprobation of the theatre in general is utter rubbish. She loved the theatre, attending many performances in Bath; her family privately performed several plays at their home in Steventon; her juvenilia include several short plays, doubtless for just these occasions; and she approved of Kotzebue in general and (at least by implication) "Lovers' Vows" in particular - there is some evidence regarding her attitude toward this play that leads strongly to this conclusion. Anyway, one mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that her heroine's or her narrator's viewpoints are hers. They may or may not be, and it can be quite an art to find out one way or another. For example, are the various pronouncements by Edmund disapproving of private theatricals in general, and those of his father (at least as voiced in his absence by Edmund) disallowing his daughters from acting in them, the opinions of the characters or those of Jane Austen herself?

Fanny's disapproval of this play relates mainly (but not entirely) to the people she knows will take the parts. Their portrayals will only heighten the destructive sexual tensions already building up between the Bertrams and the Crawfords, tensions that tear them apart at the end. The precipitate ending of the play's rehearsals sees Sir Thomas restore order to his estate of Mansfield Park, but the damage has already been done: the play has worked its mischief as an intensifier of these passions. The end of the novel reads like a parody of the "all-loose-ends-tied-up-and-everyone-lives-happily-ever-after" scenario. The younger generation of the Bertram family has imploded, with the Crawfords as catalysts, because of their inadequate upbringing. Tom soberly reflects on the devastation caused by his proposal to stage the play as Fanny and Edmund are left presiding over the smoking ruin of a noble family. It is up to them to be what Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram should have been, and we know that they'll make a better fist of it than their predecessors.

Answer: Three entrances and 42 speeches

Wadda prat! (I believe the US translation is "jerk".)

Answer: Act III

This is of course especially painful to her, as it involves scenes of relatively frank confessions of love between Amelia and Anhalt, the characters played by Mary and Fanny's secret beloved Edmund.

Fanny gets dragged more and more deeply into the preparations for the projected performance despite her disapproval of it. Eventually, she is successfully pressed into taking part in the performance itself, playing the Cottager's Wife when Mrs Grant is indisposed. She is put under intense moral pressure by everyone to do so, the implication being that her refusal would sabotage the play. Her ever-present sense of obligation (rammed down her throat by Mrs Norris) finally drives her into participating in something that she knows is wrong. She is only saved by Sir Thomas' unexpected return.

This parallels the way Edmund is lured into the same project, but with somewhat less resistance once he finds out that Mary Crawford has no objection. At the outset he is irrevocably opposed to it, and tries to persuade his sisters to abstain from it, but eventually - and reluctantly - agrees to play Anhalt in order to prevent any outsiders taking part (which Fanny considers specious reasoning). However, he winds up as part of the general chorus attempting to persuade Fanny to take part herself "if it is not VERY disagreeable to you". This type of disingenuousness should be far beneath the Edmund we know and have come to respect, if not love, and shows how far he's fallen - or, more accurately, how far down he's been dragged by the play.

I find this whole affair curiously reminiscent of the episode in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" (with which Jane Austen would doubtless have been quite familiar) in which Christian leaves the stony path he must follow in order to walk on the comfortable grass verge, which departs from the path by imperceptible degrees until he winds up in a dark, forbidding forest - wishing, no doubt, that he had kept to what he knew to be right and not rationalised himself into taking the easy option. "Lover's Vows" is seen as a temptation that must be resisted in order to avoid some kind of evil, but all fall under its insidious sway, even - with appropriate justifications - the story's morally aware and upright characters Fanny and Edmund. They, like Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress", wind up thinking they can have their moral cake and eat it, which they clearly can't.

Answer: Frederick (Henry Crawford), Agatha Friburg (Maria Bertram), Cottager and Butler (Tom Bertram), Cottager's Wife (Fanny Price), Baron Wildenhaim (Mr Yates), Amelia (Mary Crawford), Count Cassel (Mr Rushworth), Anhalt (Edmund Bertram)

Julia is in high dudgeon throughout, because she is omitted from the play and flounces out of the room. Her schadenfreude when Sir Thomas arrives to wreck the proceedings can be imagined. Mrs Grant has called in sick at the last minute, so Fanny has just been persuaded to play the Cottager's Wife, much against her better judgment. The part of Count Cassel, being that of an imbecilic fop, suits Mr Rushworth.

You really have to know something about Inchbald's "Lovers' Vows" in order to fully appreciate this novel. In that respect "Mansfield Park" is, I think, unique. Austen's audience would have been familiar with Inchbald's adaptation of August Kotzebue's 1780 play "Das Kind der Liebe" (literally "The Love Child") as by far the most successful play at Covent Garden in 1798, which was subsequently produced throughout the UK. It was controversial as well as popular, dealing as it did with extra-marital sex and illegitimate offspring, as well as adopting an egalitarian (in 1798 read "revolutionary and subversive") stance: Baron Wildenhaim finally marries Agatha, the village lass he seduced years ago and whose child, Frederick, he fathered. "Jane Austen and the Theatre" by Paul Byrne closely correlates the play with the novel and shows just how interrelated the two are. It is obvious from this study that Jane Austen made a brilliant choice in this play.

Both play and novel concern sexual relations outside marriage or betrothal, the role of the father and the legitimacy of love in marriage, among other things. In several ways, the play takes the same line as the novel regarding these matters. For instance, Baron Wildenhaim tries to discover his daughter Amelia's true feelings for Count Cassel, the fop for whom he has intended her. When he discovers that she regards the Count as nothing more than a joke, he thinks highly enough of her feelings not to press the matter. Their counterparts in the novel are Sir Thomas on the one hand and Maria and Fanny on the other. The father cuts a sorry figure compared to Baron Wildenhaim: he interviews his daughter, discovers that she has no feelings whatever for Mr Rushworth, and allows her to go ahead and marry him anyway in the full knowledge that a loveless marriage might almost certainly lead to the most miserable of lives for her - all for the sake of Rushworth's social status, his London life and his £12,000. However, when he discovers that Fanny has not much more feeling for Henry Crawford than Amelia has for Count Cassel, instead of supporting her deeply felt rejection, Sir Thomas castigates her severely and eventually sends her back to her family home in Portsmouth, hoping that this will "bring her around". He ostensibly cuts a fine figure of discretion and refinement, but underneath it all he's a bit of a monster who has raised three utterly spoilt and unscrupulous children and has no regard for their feelings or their happiness. Goodness knows how Edmund turned out so nice, but it must have been in spite of his upbringing rather than because of it.

Quite apart from the themes of the two works, the disposition of parts in the play is just right to further the antagonisms and unsuitable attachments developing amongst the party. The two pairs (Agatha/Maria and Frederick/Henry, and Anhalt/Edmund and Amelia/Mary) allow for plenty of passionate interplay between the actors concerned, with the added interest of a prospective clergyman, Edmund, playing the part of a clergyman. Agatha is Frederick's mother rather than his lover or wife, but Jane Austen makes it quite plain that they interpret their highly affecting scenes together in anything but a manner appropriate to the portrayal of a mother and son, adding to what Fanny sees as the perversity of the proceedings. There are two main women's parts (Agatha and Amelia) but three women (Maria and Julia Bertram and Mary Crawford): obviously one has to be left out. Mary Crawford and Maria Bertram appropriate the two main parts between them, and their attempt to fob Julia off with the small part of the Cottager's Wife is just too humiliating for her. The tussle that results in Julia's omission, an omission in which Henry plays a conspicuous part, highlights her rivalry with her sister for his attentions and her jealousy when she realises that his affections are definitely for Maria rather than for her.

BTW: Anhalt and the Butler could not have been played by the same person because they appear in the same scenes, as Tom points out. Otherwise he would have taken both himself.

Answer: Shakespeare's "Henry VIII"

Henry Crawford takes a fancy to Fanny and decides that he will have a bit of fun by making her fall in love with him before dumping her. The best-laid plans, however, gang oft aglay - no more so than in this case, when more-or-less the opposite happens: he actually falls for her, lock stock and barrel. As part of his smarming her up he recites several speeches from this little-known play by the great bard, and does so brilliantly enough to begin to attract Fanny. Now there's a chat-up line with style, in stark contrast to its modern counterpart: "Oi! You three! In this bed! Now!"

However, she tells him - in the most loving, caring way - to go shove his head in a bucket of pigswill three times and take it out twice. Edmund's her man. Not that she's without some doubts about Henry. But she has an inner conviction and a highly refined sense of what's right, and it seems to me ridiculous to call that "prudery". Her sense of right and wrong and of propriety is no more refined than that of any of Jane Austen's other heroines.

There seems general agreement that this play of Shakespeare's, originally titled "All is True", is a late play co-authored by him and his successor, John Fletcher. It concerns Henry's divorce from Katharine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

In the period when Austen was still regarded as being only for the literary elite, the novelists Scott (and later that century Henry James) and the critics Whateley and Lewes all held her in high esteem, the last three explicitly comparing her to Shakespeare. How right they were!

Kotzebue was one of the most famous German novelists and playwrights of his day. In Germany he was seen as being opposed to the liberals, one of whom murdered him in 1819, an act which gave Metternich the excuse to issue the Carlsbad Decrees which curbed academic and press freedom throughout the German Confederation in the cause of security. (Remind you of anything? The "War on Terror", perhaps?). In England, however, he was seen as subversive and liberal. If "Lover's Vows" is anything to go by, this reputation was well-deserved.

Among other things, the play obviously advocates a woman's right to her own feelings. "Oh come on", I hear you cry - "I know society around that time was pretty repressive, but no way could it have been that bad!" Well, it was a commonplace of the time that a woman had no business falling in love with a man until he had proposed to her. In fact, it is that viewpoint that Jane Austen satirises at the end of the third chapter of "Northanger Abbey": "for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her."

This was what makes Amelia such a shocking character to English audiences of the time: she dared to have feelings for her clergyman tutor Anhalt that he had not explicitly initiated, and even worse, she makes them known to him before he declares himself to her. Elizabeth Inchbald already says, in the preface to her adaptation of Kotzebue's play, that she's toned down Amelia's character: "the forward and unequivocal manner in which she announces her affection to her lover, in the original, would have been revolting to an English audience: the passion of love, represented on the stage, is certain to be insipid or disgusting, unless it creates smiles or tears: Amelia's love, by Kotzebue, is indelicately blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have endeavoured to attach the attention and sympathy of the audience by whimsical insinuations, rather than coarse abruptness---the same woman, I conceive, whom the author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to the English rather than the German taste."

But this amelioration (pardon the pun) isn't enough for Fanny. "Amelia appeared to her...so totally improper for home representation--- [her] language....so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty". Before we attribute her opinion to that of her creator, however, we should note that Jane Austen advocates at least the right to feel independently for all her heroines. She patently takes a dim view of Sir Thomas' actions in berating Fanny for having the presumption to turn down a perfectly eligible proposal of marriage on the irrelevant grounds that she doesn't love Henry. Elizabeth Bennet's rejection of Mr Collins is one of the most famous comic scenes in literature, while her rejection of Darcy reveals her to have very much a mind of her own, even if it does turn out to be wrongheaded. Both men obviously expect her to fall into their arms, and are quite taken aback when she refuses them. In fact, it is impossible for Mr Collins to accept that she means "no" - to him her repeated refusals, each more insistent than the last, all mean "yes". (Sounds like a rapist's mentality to me.) Austen seems to take it for granted that Lizzie, Emma Woodhouse and Fanny Price are perfectly within their rights to have strong feelings for their respective men without the latter making their attachment known to them. Indeed, does Fanny herself not spend virtually the entire novel longing for an Edmund who is totally unaware of her feelings for him?

Dibdin's "The Birth Day" was his adaptation of Kotzebue's play "Reconciliation", in which a family feud is eventually resolved by cousins falling in love. Jane Austen saw the play in Bath in 1799 and, according to her letters, enjoyed it.

Answer: No one - she's utterly on her own

Not one character agrees with her stance (Susan is too young to really care). William remains silent, recognising that any further representations to her on behalf of Henry would only upset her. Even her beloved Edmund, the very embodiment of moral discretion and discernment, is disappointed that she refuses such a sterling character. Yet, even though she began to go astray as regards the play, she won't be influenced by any considerations, be they a sense of obligation, propriety, social convention or whatever, into betraying what is most important to her: her feelings. One can safely attribute this attitude to Jane Austen herself. On at least one occasion she was proposed to by a family friend (Harris Bigg-Wither), a match that would have been universally approved as being a suitable, indeed an advantageous one for her and for her family.

She accepted on impulse, but changed her mind the very next day on the grounds that, whatever the benefits of the marriage for the Austens (and remember that marrying well for the sake of her family was regarded among other things as a duty for a young woman), the overriding factor - love - was missing.

Answer: A neglected fall followed by heavy drinking

I'm not sure if Tom Bertram isn't unique in Jane Austen's works as a major character of bad disposition who becomes reformed. "Sense and Sensibility's" Willoughby comes close: he apologises to Elinor for his conduct towards Marianne, and we assume that he lives the rest of his life ruing his decision to marry for money rather than for love.

But Tom seems to have been so sobered by his experiences that he "became what he ought to be, useful to his father, steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself."

Answer: His brother Edmund

He doesn't want his mother because she would worry him, nor his father because he couldn't talk at his level. He doesn't mention Mary Crawford at all. The import is obvious. Earlier, Tom had brusquely dismissed Edmund's concerns about the play with the most facile rationalisations before basically telling him to mind his own business, but he's come to realise, however late in the day, his brother's true worth. I guess this more than anything else points to his true reformation of character.

Answer: Her father Mr Price

No, not Mary Crawford, who writes Fanny a hasty letter informing her that rumours of an elopement are floating around, but couched in such vague terms that Fanny can't make head or tail of it. She assumes that the "they" in Mary's letter refers to Mr and Mrs Rushworth, whereas in fact it refers to Maria and Henry. It is Fanny's father who reads her the newspaper clipping outlining the true situation.

Mary is obviously so reluctant to tell Fanny that her "beloved" Henry has run off with someone else that she obfuscates the contents of the letter to the extent that its true import is incomprehensible. Jane Austen is nothing if not a supreme psychologist!

Answer: An old friend of Sir Thomas

Henry said he would go to his estate at Everingham after his return from Portsmouth, but he was persuaded to stay for Mrs Fraser's party - and the damage was done. (Mind you - and remembering that it was his "curiosity and vanity" that reignited the affair, and that she at first received him "with a coldness which ought to have been repulsive, and have established apparent indifference between them for ever" - if he was that inconstant, what were the chances of his remaining with Fanny if she had accepted him?)

Answer: Fanny for not marrying him and keeping him occupied so that he would not be distracted by Maria

Yeah, right, Mary, blame poor ol' Fanny. Everyone else does. (You're not related to Mrs Norris, are you?)

What does Mary's accusation say about the concern she has previously expressed for Fanny? Discuss.

Answer: No

They just cohabited until they got on each other's nerves too much. "She had lived with him to be reproached as the ruin of all his happiness in Fanny, and carried away no better consolation in leaving him, than that she had divided them. What can exceed the misery of such a mind in such a situation?" Enough said.

Answer: Henry Crawford elopes with Maria and Julia runs away with Mr Yates

Just as Julia is the less-favoured of the two sisters (especially by Mrs Norris), so her crime is not seen as being as serious as is Maria's. This is obviously largely to do with Maria's being married. Julia does not rise as high, so she does not fall so low either. One has to feel sorry for her, being perpetually second-best, whether in the legitimate family context or in the affections of Henry Crawford.

At the end of the novel she finally gets her place in the sun. Will she be mature enough not to crow over Maria's demise, I wonder?

Answer: Thomas Egerton

The publishers mentioned are the four with whom Jane Austen had dealings during her lifetime. In 1797, when she was 21 going on 22, her father wrote to Cadell offering him "First Impressions" (the eventual "Pride and Prejudice"), but he declined. Whatever his present whereabouts, he doubtless considers himself in hell.

When she was 28, her older brother Henry offered "Susan" (posthumously published by him as "Northanger Abbey") to Crosby, who paid £10 for the copyright and promised to publish it. He advertised it as being "in the press". He couldn't be bothered to take it any further than that. In 1816, when she was a famous authoress, Austen bought the rights back off him. For his probable state of mind, see Cadell above.

In 1811 Egerton published "Sense and Sensibility", two years later "Pride and Prejudice" and the following year "Mansfield Park".

In 1815, perhaps because the Prince Regent made it known that he would not look unfavourably on a dedication from her (trans. "I command you to dedicate your next novel to me, wench!"), she used the more popular John Murray for "Emma" with the appropriate dedication, despite Austen's disapproval of the Prince Regent. Murray subsequently published the second edition of "Mansfield Park".

In 1832/33 Richard Bentley, having purchased all the rights to Jane Austen's novels, published them in his "Standard Novels" series, since when they have been continuously in print, although they were largely considered as works for the connoisseur until her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published his "Memoir" in 1869... and the rest is history.