Celebrating 200 Years of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

Today Austen fans are celebrating the 200th Birthday of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park or rather the 200th anniversary of its first publication, which was this month May 1814, 200 years ago. Interesting, there had only been three TV (2) and film (1) adaptations made on this one. The MP novel is not quite a fan favorite though amongst Austen's six novels nor its adaptations. I've seen 2 (out of 3) adaptations, the 1999 Mansfield Park film with Frances O'Connor & Johnny Lee Miller and the 2007 ITV/PBS Masterpiece TV movie with Billie Piper. I must say I liked and preferred the former and only film version even though it wasn't faithful to its source material, the MP novel.

Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mansfield Park tomorrow!

On Friday, staff will join with visitors to celebrate this anniversary of Mansfield Park, the first book which the world-famous Hampshire author wrote entirely at the cottage in Chawton, Alton.
Read more here.

Mansfield Park

Jane Austen began planning Mansfield Park in February of 1811 and finished it in the summer of 1813. It was published on May 4, 1814 and was Austen's third published novel; though, as with all of her novels, her name was not attached to it until after her death.

This was also the first of her novels which was not a revision of an earlier work. Elinor and Marianne was probably written in 1795 and finally revised and published as Sense and Sensibility in late 1811. First Impressions was written between 1796-97, and was finally published in 1813 as Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park, therefore, was conceived from its very beginning by a more mature Jane Austen than the previous two novels—written, as they were, first by the young Austen (~ 20 years old) and then the older Austen (~ 36). By the time Jane Austen began planning and writing Mansfield Park she had passed through her eligible years and, at 36, into confirmed spinsterhood. Read more about Mansfield Park via Austen.com.

TV, Film & Stage Adaptations (via Wikipedia)

  Mansfield Park has been the subject of a number of adaptations:

• 1983: Mansfield Park, BBC series directed by David Giles, starring Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price, Nicholas Farrell as Edmund Bertram and Anna Massey as Mrs Norris.
  

• 1999: Mansfield Park, film directed by Patricia Rozema, starring Frances O'Connor as Fanny Price and Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund Bertram (interestingly, he also featured in the 1983 version, playing one of Fanny's brothers). This film alters several major elements of the story and depicts Fanny as author of some of Austen's actual letters as well as her children's history of England. It emphasized Austen's disapproval of slavery.
  

• 2007: Mansfield Park, a television adaptation produced by Company Pictures and starring Billie Piper as Fanny Price andBlake Ritson as Edmund Bertram, was screened on ITV1 in the UK on 18 March 2007.^[9]
  
  

  

• 2011: Mansfield Park, a chamber opera by Jonathan Dove, with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton, commissioned and first performed by Heritage Opera, 30 July – 15 August 2011.^[10]

• 2012: Mansfield Park, stage adaptation by Tim Luscombe, produced by the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, toured the UK in 2012 and 2013.^[11] The play was published by Oberon Books (ISBN 978-1-84943-484-3).