MANSFIELD PARK
(1814)

by

Jane Austen




CHAPTER I

About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon,
with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck
to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park,
in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised
to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts
and consequences of an handsome house and large income.
All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match,
and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least
three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.
She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation;
and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss
Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple
to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.
But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune
in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found
herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Norris,
a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any