Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen’s 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement’ and the transformative power of money.
In this abridged version of the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen’s acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny’s moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.
To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/applecryt
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
Clare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.
Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.
Further reading from the LRB:
John Mullan: Noticing and Not Noticing
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n22/john-mullan/noticing-and-not-noticing
Colm Toíbìn: The Importance of Aunts
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n06/colm-toibin/the-importance-of-aunts
W.J.T. Mitchell: In the Wilderness
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n07/w.j.t.-mitchell/in-the-wilderness
Next episode: Clare Bucknell and guests on Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen’s 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement’ and the transformative power of money.
In this abridged version of the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen’s acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny’s moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.
To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/applecryt
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
Clare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.
Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.
Further reading from the LRB:
John Mullan: Noticing and Not Noticing
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n22/john-mullan/noticing-and-not-noticing
Colm Toíbìn: The Importance of Aunts
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n06/colm-toibin/the-importance-of-aunts
W.J.T. Mitchell: In the Wilderness
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n07/w.j.t.-mitchell/in-the-wilderness
Next episode: Clare Bucknell and guests on Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
