Mansfield Park is recommended to modern audiences because it grapples with the topic of slavery and how upper-class English families like the Bertrams benefitted from the revenue from sugar plantations. Sir Thomas, the patriarch of the story is sorting out his business affairs in Antigua during crucial events, but what he is doing there is only vaguely alluded to. The novel in fact does not make any pronouncements about slavery, nor are there any consequences for the Bertram family for living off the avails of slavery--though modern critics believe it contains veiled anti-slavery allusions.
    Well, if anti-slavery messages are why we pick up Mansfield Park, we don't we toss it aside and read Alethea Lewis instead? Because she doesn't go with subtle veiled allusions. She doesn't hold back on her opinions of slave traders and plantation owners. We meet enslaved people in The Microcosm and we travel to Jamaica. Further, Lewis's novel was published before the slave trade (but not slavery) was outlawed, while Mansfield Park was published seven years after. Thus, Fanny Price asking her uncle a question about the slave trade, years after the trade was made illegal, is not exactly a daring thing to do. Regular readers of my blog will know this is something I've banged on about quite a lot, but I had to mention it again after discovering The Microcosm.  The title presumably means, "this novel is a microcosm of society today."... 
    And, Lewis uses the name "Mansfield" in her novel! I personally don't think she is intending a reference to Lord Mansfield, but others may disagree.
​​     If you've been told it was risky for Austen to speak out against slavery, and that she could only hint at it by speaking of "Moor Park Apricots," if you've been told she was brave for speaking out against slavery, check out what Lewis wrote, below (see "Editorial") 

     In my last post, I gave a synopsis of an 1817 novel, Modern Manners, or a Season at Harrowgate, which featured a big cast of characters, two sets of romantic triangles, a comic subplot, misunderstanding, and moral lessons. Now I'd like to discuss some other features of interest.
      Every time I read one of these forgotten novels of the long 18th century, I make note of any references to slavery and colonialism, women's rights, and other topics of current academic interest. For example, several characters in this book have colonial wealth; most notably, Lord Fitzgerald, who came back from India with a large fortune. He intends to marry his son to an heiress with an East Indian fortune. While Lord Fitzgerald has his faults as a parent, he is not critiqued in the novel for the source of his wealth, though of course it is inferior to inheriting your wealth but a class/rank standpoint. The heiress, Elvina Dorrington, is not faulted for her Indian riches, but for her lack of sound religious principle and her "languid" and sensual character.

Note: I've included details  that resemble Austen, while leaving it to my clever readers to spot them.​

Synopsis
   Modern Manners, an 1817 novel by an anonymous authoress, starts with the marriages of the parents of our main characters. Amelia has the good luck to captivate Henry Fitzgerald, a “gentleman from the Indies” (aka a man with a colonial fortune) who all the “Mamma’s” of the neighbourhood are angling after. Amelia’s match means she goes off to live in London and mingle with the ton. Her sister Matilda marries Mr. Oswald, a respectable vicar with a small independent fortune. Matilda “sighed at the idea of… her sister [Amelia] being lost in the fashionable vortex of dissipation and vanity."  
   The years pass, the countrified Oswalds have a daughter and the city-dwelling Fitzgeralds have two sons and a daughter. Mr. Fitzgerald becomes an MP and then is elevated to the peerage; now, instead of being the wife of a nouveaux riche Indian nabob, Amelia is Lady Fitzgerald. An easy-going woman of no strong opinions, Amelia is more engaged with her morning visits and playing cards than paying attention to the education and moral upbringing of her daughter Julia.
​     The Fitzgeralds come to visit the Oswalds and their lovely, sensible, daughter Emma. Julia Fitzgerald is a social butterfly and an enthusiast for Rousseau, rugged scenery, and defying whatever it is her parents want her to do. We learn that the oldest son, Frederic, is not very attentive to his fiancée. She is Elvina Dorrington, an Indian heiress. Emma Oswald, our main heroine, is intelligent, principled, and sincerely devout, and the author struggles to make her as interesting as Elvina and Julia...  

    By her own account, Jane Gardiner (1758–1840) was fortunate in her employers when she went to work in her mid-teens as governess for a genteel family with six daughters. Ten years later, she started her own school so she could offer a home to her parents and her invalid sister. By the time she retired at age 78, she had taught over 600 girls and worked for more than sixty years.
     Gardiner also published some children’s books. Her 1806 book, An Excursion from London to Dover, is explained by its subtitle: “Containing some account of the Manufactures, Natural and Artificial Curiosities, History and Antiquities of the Towns and Villages. Interspersed with Historical and Biographical Anecdotes, Natural History, Poetical Extracts, and Tales. Particularly Intended for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth.”
     The book is narrated by Jeanette, who is travelling with her friend Adelina and Adelina's father Mr. A____. It’s like an 1806 version of The Magic Schoolbus but without the magic.
  All of this improving information is roughly tied to something approaching a plot, in which Mr. A_____ encounters several old school-mates or acquaintances on the journey. These additional adults give  impromptu lectures to the children, speaking off-the-cuff about everything from the development of paper to to the anatomy of the snail. Adelina and Jeanette also recite poems from memory, whether the topic under discussion is the ocean, hedgehogs, spiders, war, clouds, cuckoos, etc, and Jeanette has perfect recall of the biographies of eminent rulers, scientists, and statesmen. Gardiner also works in some short moral tales and a backstory or two.
      Writing after her mother’s death, Jane Gardiner’s daughter said of An Excursion: “Though this work does not possess much originality of thought, the reviewers allowed it to evince sound judgment, great taste, and an earnest desire to promote the improvement of the rising generation.”
     “Originality of thought,” is a euphemism for the fact that most of the book was what we today would call plagiarized.