On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen’s 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement’ and the transformative power of money.

In the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen’s acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny’s moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

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Clare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.

Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.

Next episode: ‘Crotchet Castle’ by Thomas Love Peacock.

Further reading from the LRB:

John Mullan: Noticing and Not Noticing

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n22/john-mullan/noticing-and-not-noticing

Colm Toíbìn: The Importance of Aunts

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n06/colm-toibin/the-importance-of-aunts

W.J.T. Mitchell: In the Wilderness

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n07/w.j.t.-mitchell/in-the-wilderness

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