<DIV><p><b>Listen to audio presented by Literary Affairs: .</p><br><br><p>Begun in 1811 at the height of Jane Austen's writing powers and published in 1814, <B>Mansfield Park</B> marks a conscious break from the tone of her first three novels, <B>Northanger Abbey</B>, <B>Sense and Sensibility</B>, and <B>Pride and Prejudice</B>, the last of which Austen came to see as "rather too light." Fanny Price is unlike any of Austen's previous heroines, a girl from a poor family brought up in a splendid country house and possessed of a vast reserve of moral fortitude and imperturbability. She is very different from Elizabeth Bennet, but is the product of the same inspired imagination.</p> </div>