Mansfield Park, considered the author's most controversial novel, was published anonymously, as were all of Jane Austen's novels, in 1814. While Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice are considered, as one critic remarks, "the gay offsprings of her youth," Mansfield Park is a far more mature, darker novel, written by a woman who had by then experienced more of the world. As Adolphus Alfred Jack remarked in his 1897 Essay on the Novel, Mansfield Park is "more finished," "more subtle," and "quieter than her earlier works." As Austen grew older, he continues, "her powers grew and deepened... while Pride and Prejudice is gay, Mansfield Park is sombre." Indeed, it is of interest to...
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