'Mansfield Park - The Companion Edition' Presents Austen's Complete 1814 Text, Collated Against the First Edition, and Completes the Six Austen Novels in Companion Classics

Mansfield Park, The Companion Edition Presents Austen's Complete 1814 Text, Collated Against the First Edition, and Completes the Six Austen Novels in Companion Classics

The 1814 Egerton first edition, collated chapter by chapter, with explainers on the theatricals, on Antigua, and on the money and the Church, and thirty discussion questions fenced until their chapters

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In May 1814, Thomas Egerton of Whitehall published, anonymously, the third novel by the author of *Sense and Sensibility* and *Pride and Prejudice*, and Jane Austen's contemporaries promptly began the argument readers have never finished: is Fanny Price insipid, or is she the bravest of the heroines? A new Companion Classics edition, Mansfield Park, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 159,514 words, all forty-eight chapters, unabridged, in the text taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #141 and collated chapter by chapter against Internet Archive scans of the 1814 first edition (Egerton, three volumes; University of Illinois copy: located-chapter token agreement 0.9226-0.9559 across the forty-four cleanly bounded chapters; a 288-probe test across all forty-eight chapters matched at 78.1%, the misses resolving to scan noise and the base text's modernized spelling, which the edition discloses rather than disguising, no substantive variant against 1814 was found). With this volume, Companion Classics completes its editions of Austen's six major novels.

The story itself needs no selling: Fanny Price, taken at ten from a poor, noisy Portsmouth home to be raised as the dependent poor relation at Mansfield Park; her aunt Norris, who proposed the charity and pays none of its costs; the arrival of the brilliant, dangerous Crawfords; a great house turned upside down by amateur theatricals, the scandalous *Lovers' Vows*, in the master's absence abroad; and a heroine whose whole arsenal is attention, conscience, and the word no.

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on Fanny Price and the novel of conscience she carries; a Who's Who of eleven entries covering Mansfield and Portsmouth; four explainers, the theatricals and *Lovers' Vows*; Antigua and the slave trade, the foundation under the great house's income, addressed as a matter of record, including Fanny's famous question and the "dead silence" that answers it; the money, the livings, and the Church; and Portsmouth and the wartime Navy; a short life of Jane Austen; a note on the period and the text; a reading schedule in four meetings; and thirty discussion questions, spoiler-fenced by meeting, so that the proposal, the Portsmouth verdict, and the final scandal stay secrets until their chapters.

Alongside the book, Mansfield Park, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (26 pages, US Letter) for book clubs: the four-meeting plan, the Who's Who and explainers in full, all thirty discussion questions arranged by meeting, and the Household Ledger, the kit's signature activity, a running account, kept one page per meeting, of everything given to Fanny and everything she was charged for it. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store.

Mansfield Park, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback and hardcover; the 583-page interior exceeds KDP's 550-page hardcover cap at the 6×9 trim and will be re-set at a larger trim for hardcover, stated plainly rather than assumed). The text is public domain worldwide (Jane Austen died in 1817). The 1814 first edition was published without illustrations, and none are reproduced or claimed; the cover is an original painting made for this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any screen adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Mansfield Park, The Companion Edition, Jane Austen (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first edition (Thomas Egerton, Whitehall, London, 1814), via Project Gutenberg eBook #141, collated against IA scans of the 1814 first edition; 48 chapters; 159,514 words; no illustrations (the first edition has none); interior proof 583 pages, 6 x 9 in.