I was doing some research into how the reception of Mansfield Park has changed since it was first published. It is now generally regarded as her least popular novel, and some say, her least successful novel artistically. It's a favourite of mine, obviously, since I wrote an Austenesque trilogy based on it. In my own books, I had to come to terms with the slave trade and the fact that Sir Thomas owns a plantation (called an "estate" in the book) in Antigua. The issue of slavery was not an issue for a critic writing 100 years ago, even though they were not as far removed from the time of slavery.
​   I also had to deal with the widespread perception of the heroine Fanny Price as a prim little prig, or a timid little mouse. The anonymous author of this 1927 review, reproduced below, doesn't like Fanny, Edmund, or the book, but his opinions and the way he phrased them amused me. I think other Janeites would like this too, even Mansfield Park fans. But if you haven't read Mansfield Park, be advised, this review contains spoilers.

​MANSFIELD PARK—JANE AUSTEN’S WORST NOVEL
  Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Jan. 20, 1927
    When new books fail to charm—and there comes a time when they do, and when all one’s favourite modern authors seem to be writing tiresome rubbish—there is no cure so good for the soul as to re-read old ones. We suspect that advancing age has much to do with this failure to find a new book to our taste.
   To anyone suffering from this sad fate, whatever his age and literary preferences, we unhesitatingly recommend a course of Disraeli novels or those of Jane Austen.
    To write of Jane Austen in general is like trying to find something new to say about the weather… Yet there remains, we think, something to be said of Mansfield Park. Perhaps it was because we read it last of all, of perhaps because it really is not so good as the others, that we must admit to finding it a very mediocre performance. Compared with the charming simplicity of Catherine Morland, the robust sense of Elinor Dashwood, the quiet intelligence of Anne Eliot or the satirical wit of Emma Woodhouse, Fanny Price is a dull and extraordinarily priggish heroine. As for Edmund Bertram, he is a prince of prigs indeed.

   I am slowly working my way through a dozen or so novels, all belonging to a tangled attribution chain, with the intent of figuring out whether Mrs. E.G. Bayfield or Mrs. E.M. Foster is the most likely author of The Woman of Colour, a Regency-era book which has drawn much recent scholarly interest. Next up: The Corinna of England, and a Heroine in the Shade (1809), published by Benjamin Crosby and Co. The fact that the author of Corinna of England is credited as being the author of The Woman of Colour right there on the title page to the right is not enough to prove the attribution, because the waters have been considerably muddied along the way.
    At any rate, let’s turn to the novel. No, wait, we can’t do that yet, until we first explain that Corinna of England is a parody of a tremendously successful French novel, Corinne, or, Italy (1807), by the authoress and public intellectual Madame de Stael. 
​    Corinne caused a sensation at the time but also caused a backlash in England because of its feminist heroine. Corinne is a free-spirited poet and artist who entertained men at her home, did not shy away from fame, and openly courted the man she wanted to marry. The plot of de Stael’s novel is of secondary importance, although I will note two things which struck me; one, that de Stael uses a lot of narrative philosophical interludes which put me in mind of George Elliot, and secondly, after introducing her hero, she has him heroically rescue some people from a burning building. In other words, she gives him some hero bona fides, because otherwise he’s just some rich, well-born Englishman moping around Europe. As I have learned, a lot of leading men in these old novels are not heroes in the sense of being heroic, and some in my opinion are quite unheroic.
    So that's Corinne. Now, let's move on to the 1809 parody....

     This post is yet another entry in the series clearing up the tangled attribution chain of aspiring authoress ​Eliza Kirkham Mathews (EKM) who died in 1802. 23 years after her death, London publisher Oddy & Co. issued an inexpensive one-volume novel titled The Phantom, or, Mysteries of the Castle, “by the late Mrs. Mathews, of the Theatres Royal, York and Hull." The story was offered for a mere four shillings--you can compare some other prices on their "new publications" list at right.
   James Burmester, an antiquarian book expert, pointed out that this London edition appears to be a re-issue of an earlier book that never made it onto any publication lists. Although the London publishers are on the title page, a publisher based in Hull has his imprint on the back of the title page and at the end. And Hull is where EKM lived with her aspiring actor husband Charles Mathews before they moved to York.
     But what about this business of being of the Theatres Royal [in] York and Hull? It's Charles Mathews' second wife who was the actress, not EKM. But Anne Jackson Mathews --herself a published authoress--was alive when The Phantom came out; she was not "the late" Mrs. Mathews.
   In Charles Mathews' memoir, there is no mention of EKM ever treading the boards--can she be described as being  "of the Theatres Royal, York and Hull"?  My research has turned up the fact that EKM did take to the stage, once in York and once in Hull, on her husband's "benefit nights." (Those are special performances when the profits from the night go to the featured performer.) So, while it might be an exaggeration, EKM could technically be described as being of the Theatres Royal of York and Hull.
    This declaration jazzed up the title page of The Phantom and made the connection to the by-then-famous Charles Mathews clear to the reading public. More about EKM's theatrical career another time. Now, on to the novel itself...