Perfect Additions
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen was born in Hampshire in 1775, the seventh child and youngest daughter of George Austen, rector of Deane and Steventon, and his wife, Cassandra. She began writing poems, plays and stories for her family from a young age, and her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, was released by Thomas Egerton to sell-out acclaim in 1811. Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) followed, and these were the last of Austen’s works to come out in her lifetime. Her novels, including the posthumously published Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818), are today considered amongst the finest in the English language. She died at Winchester in 1817.
Lucy Worsley OBE is a historian, author and television presenter. After studying history at New College, Oxford, she served for 21 years as Chief Curator at the charity Historic Royal Palaces, based at Hampton Court Palace. She won a BAFTA in 2018 for the BBC documentary Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley. As well as her historical novel for younger readers, The Austen Girls (2020), her books include Jane Austen at Home (2017), Queen Victoria (2018) and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (2022).