Jane Austin’s Mansfield Park is 200 years old this year, and I’m celebrating by reading and watching a number of re-tellings, re-imaginings, and sequels. For this book, possibly the least popular of Jane Austin’s novels, the main problem is simply finding enough books and DVDs for one review a month!
I happen to like Fanny Price, and think in many ways she is among the strongest of Jane Austin’s heroines. Many people, however, consider her far too insipid to be interesting. As a result, the stories based on Mansfield Park almost without exception try to “improve” her, or (as in the current story) leave her out entirely.
Yes, leave her out. Mansfield Park Revisited starts with the death of Sir Thomas Bertram in Antigua, followed almost immediately by the departure of Edmond, Fanny, and their infant son to straighten out the Antiguan property. From that point on it is essentially a retelling of Mansfield Park with the somewhat more forward Susan replacing Fanny. There are bits brought in from other Austin novels; Mrs. Osborne seems taken from Mrs. Croft in Persuasion, for instance. But on the whole it is a retelling of Mansfield Park with the names changed.
The book was originally published in 1985. It was reissued in 2008, 4 years after the author’s death. At some time at or after the reissue, it was also released on Kindle, and this is the version I have. Unfortunately it was never formatted for Kindle, and my major criticism of the book is just that: the e-book formatting is a mess. Words and sentences have odd breaks, and from having formatted a book for Kindle myself, I suspect that the PDF of the print book was simply transferred over to Kindle. It doesn’t work.
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I like Fanny Price too. Much under-rated in my view 🙂
Glad someone else likes her.
Dear Sue Ann,
I was dismayed to read your comments about the Kindle edition of Joan’s ‘Mansfield Revisited’ and having, like you, checked the formatting of many books scanned for republication, am aware how these errors can spoil the pleasure of a book, let alone totally confuse the unwary reader! Sourcebooks, the same publisher, are bringing out some more of Joan Aiken’s historical novels soon, and I will be in touch with them, and hope to put this right. Meanwhile you might enjoy a piece I wrote about her ‘Mansfield Revisited’ and the references to other Austen novels, and indeed to Jane Austen’s own life that it contains – I think she felt it was something other ‘Janeites’ enjoyed and a way of making her own tributes to her favourite author more authentic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts?
http://joanaiken.wordpress.com/category/book-review/joan-aiken-jane-austen/
The specific errors I noted were:
(1) The initial letter of each chapter was separated from the text. Probably drop capitals in the original, but they didn’t transfer to Kindle.
(2) The first line(?) of each chapter was apparently all captials in the original. There was a line break put in at the end of this line, instead of flowing the text properly.
(3) Some words were broken with a space at syllable breaks. I suspect in the original these were hyphenated at the end of lines, but that did not transfer properly to kindle.
(4) There was no table of contents linked to the chapters. This may have been missing in the print book, but it is even more important in the e-book version, where it is very difficult to figure where you are.
I enjoyed the Austen flavor, but I kept being jerked out of the story by the formatting.
Thank you so much for your time, I was very sorry to hear about the flawed copy, but now at least can do something about it! I will certainly pass on your message, with many thanks.
Glad I could help.