Join us for the Harewood Jane Austen Book Club! Whether you're a first time Austen reader or coming back to her, come along for a relaxed conversation about Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.

This book club will be led by Jennie Batchelor, Head and Professor of English at the University of York.

We recommend that you have read Mansfield Park in advance so that you can get the most out of this informal and lively chat led by one of the curators of Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter.

Mansfield Park, 1814

Mansfield Park is Austen’s most complex novel. The Bertrams are a dysfunctional family, whose home, wealth and status are explicitly funded by the enslaved labour of workers on their Antiguan plantation. When outsider Fanny Price asks her uncle about the ‘slave-trade’, she is met with a conspicuous silence on one of the most discussed, important and divisive political and humanitarian issues of the day.

Blackie House Library and Museum, first edition of Mansfield Park is on display in Ante Room.

About Jennie Batchelor

Jennie Batchelor, Head and Professor of English at the University of York, is an academic, author and speaker who has written and edited several books on women’s writing, dress, fashion and early women’s magazines. Her most recent books include The Lady’s Magazine (1770-1832) and the Making of Literary History (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and the popular history and craft book Jane Austen Embroidery (Pavillion 2020) on which she worked with Alison Larkin.