Isobel's struggle to understand the world she was living in. Her joy when she discovered books and found that in them she had friends and somewhere to belong. I loved her gradual blossoming once she had left her parents' house and found she was someone worthwhile. Later, when she revisited her old neighbourhood as an adult, she was to realise that most of the fears that had been ground into her as a child were lies. She was free. Free to become the person she knew she could be

I confess to not having wanted to read fiction much for some years now. Reading other people's take on their own little segments of the world all seemed rather inconsequential and hardly to be rated against the best non-fiction. So now having established my philistine credentials, I have to say that Amy Witting has entirely won me over. This novel has the freshness and immediacy of what I consider to be good writing. As an Australian, the evocation of an older Australia, brought back odd memories of a Melbourne childhood. The setting is Sydney, sometime in the first part of the twentieth century and I suppose between the two world wars. The outer world hardly figures as the action mostly takes place within the child's universe, centring on the discordant relationship between Isobel and her mother. The emotional sadism of her parents is borne home to her when she makes a trip down "memory lane" to see her old house - both parents by then being dead - and meets a former neighbour of whom she had lived in dread due to an imagined misdemeanour, conjured up by her parents. But ultimately, "I For Isobel" is about a writer coming to understand her vocation, to understand her freakish bookishness and compulsive descent into the word "factory", her instinctual ability to observe, collect and record what she sees. For the first time in a long while, I can see that the writer's craft when it is practised at Witting's level is rather worthwhile after all.

I picked this book up in a used book store for [money] more than when it was purchased new in 1960. The pages literally crumbled as I turned them, but I couldn't put the book down. I was enthralled with the life of Oscar Wilde. Now, this biography isn't one written years after the subject's death from scraps of information. No. This is written by a very close friend of Wilde's, Frank Harris. In being written by someone of such closeness, it lends credence to the harsh words the author had to say of Wilde. Harris calls him lazy and slothenly. Of course, Wilde caused quite a sensation in his time. He was imprisoned under other pretenses, but mainly because he was a homosexual in a time period when this was not acceptable. Oscar was one who did not care what others thought of him. He was determined to live a life of pleasure and to make money doing things that he liked: writing and speaking. However, he did a great deal of leaching off of others. There's no denying Wilde's genius. I have yet to read any of his works except for a short essay entitled "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." To me, the thoughts seemed profound. But Harris says that Oscar never said or wrote anything original; he merely took other people's thoughts, meshed them together, and said them in a more profound way. This is a biography that reads like a fine story. Harris is a great writer and has more first-hand knowledge of his subject than any other biographer that I've read. I'd reccomend this book to others without reservation.

"The best life of Oscar Wilde", said George Bernard Shaw after reading this book. I cannot but agree with him utterly. No unnecesary data is wasted, no long reflexions bore us. It's just an Oscar's very close friend telling us with great elegance and delicacy the story of one he has admired and loved so much, but without fear of saying the truth. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. Of course, the reader has to know Mr Harris is the true "lead actor" in the story he's telling us, always supporting the Truth and the Right. But one can easily forgive him for that in reward for the great moments un Oscar's life he's saved from oblivion and darkness. A wonderful work of art itself, this biography must be read by every admirer of that Prince of Charm Oscar Wilde was. X. Careaga

A page-turner is what this turned out to be for me. I first read about Lady Mary while reading another book whose author described her as 'an intrepid 18th-century traveler'. That intrigued me. I meant to get Lady Mary's 'Travels' and found this delightful book instead. Her letters were so enjoyable it was hard for me to put this book aside. There's so much humor, wisdom and intelligence in her writing. She had a true spirit of adventure. I came away from this book admiring Lady Mary very much. It's a real shame her work is not more well known.

I stumbled upon this book while researching an essay on early modern women writers and quickly came to admire this wonderful woman. She has an intelligent and amusing way of describing and relating people and incidents. She has all the intelligence, brilliance and wit of Jane Austen. I highly recommend this for all those who love the lives of intelligent, spirited and talented women.

This book provides a lot of interesting information regarding Emily Bronte's life. In particular, it deals with how her experiences affected her writing, specifically her novel Wuthering Heights. At times it was a little difficult to read, and got somewhat dry, but overall gave a lot of insight into the origins of this fascinating author's short career. If you're looking for information on Emily's life and writing that will highlight connections between the two, this book will definitely help!

Like all devoted lovers of Jane Austen, I have long pondered why she chose to write this, of all books, at time she was experiencing the intoxicating success of Pride and Prejudice.

The protagonist is a loathesome little priss. Austen herself says so in her letters. Fanny Price is neurotic and oversensitive where Austen's other heroines are brash and healthy. Even Austen's own family found the ending as odd and disappointing as do subsequent generations of readers.

So there's a puzzle to be solved here. The answer may lie in the fact that this book was written when, after a lifetime of obscurity, Austen found herself, briefly, a huge success. As is so often the case with writers, the success of her earlier book may have given her the courage to decided write about something that REALLY mattered to her--and what that was was her own very complex feelings about the intensely sexual appeal of a morally unworthy person.

This topic, the charm of the scoundrel, is one that flirts through all her other books, usually in a side plot. However, the constraints of Austen's day made it impossible for her to write the story of a woman who falls for a scoundrel with a sympathetic viewpoint character.

So what I think Austen may have decided to do was to write this story using Edmund--a male--as the sympathetic character who experiences the devastating sexual love of someone unworthy. Then, through a strange slight of hand, she gives us a decoy protagonist--Fanny Price, who if she is anything, is really the judgemental, punishing Joy Defeating inner voice--the inner voice that probably kept Jane from indulging her own very obvious interest in scoundrels in real life!

In defense of this theory, consider these points:

1. Jane herself loved family theatricals. Fanny's horror of them and of the flirting that took place is the sort of thing she made fun of in others. Jane also loved her cousin, Eliza, a married woman of the scoundrelly type, who flirted outrageously with Jane's brother Henry when Jane was young--very much like Mary Crawford. The fact is, and this bleeds through the book continuously, Austen doesn't at all like Fanny Price!

To make it more complex, Fanny's relationship with Henry Crawford is an echo of the Edmund-Mary theme, but Austen makes Henry so appealing that few readers have forgiven Austen for not letting Fanny liven up a little and marry him! No. Austen is trying to make a case for resisting temptation, but in this book she most egregiously fails.

2. Austen is famous for never showing us a scene or dialogue which she hadn't personally observed in real life, hence the off-stage proposals in her other books.

Does this not make it all the more curious that the final scene between Edmund and Mary Crawford in which he suffers his final disillusionment and realizes the depths of her moral decay comes to us with some very convincing dialogue? Is it possible that Jane lived out just such a scene herself? That she too was forced by her inner knowlege of what was right to turn away from a sexually appealing scoundrel of her own?

3. Fanny gets Edmund in the end, but it is a joyless ending for most readers because it is so clear that he is in love with Mary. Can it be that Austen here was suggesting the grim fate that awaits those who do turn away from temptations--a lifetime of listening to that dull, upstanding, morally correct but oh so joyless voice of reason?

We'll never know. Cassandra Austen burnt several years' worth of her sister's letters--letters written in the years before she prematurely donned her spinster's cap and gave up all thoughts of finding love herself. Her secrets whatever they were, were kept within the family.

But one has to wonder about what was really going on inside the curious teenaged girl who loved Samual Richardson's rape saga and wrote the sexually explicit oddity that comes to us as Lady Susan. Perhaps in Mansfield Park we get a dim echo of the trauma that turned the joyous outrageous rebel who penned Pride and Prejudice in her late teens into the staid, sad woman when she was dying wrote Persuasion--a novel about a recaptured young love.

So with that in mind, why not go and have another look at Mansfield Park!

"Mansfield Park" has always been Jane Austen's most controversial novel.

The heroine of the book is Fanny Price, a powerless and socially marginal young woman. To almost everyone she knows, she barely exists. As a child, she is sent to live with the family of her wealthy uncle. Her parents give her up without regret, and her uncle only takes her in because he is deceived into doing so. Fanny's wealthy relations, when they deign to notice her at all, generally do so only to make sure she knows of her inferiority and keeps in her place. Fanny is thus almost completely alone, the only kindness she receives coming from her cousin Edmund. Forced by circumstances to be an observer, Fanny is a faultlessly acute one, as well as the owner of a moral compass that always points true north.

Those who dislike "Mansfield Park" almost invariably cite Fanny as the novel's central fault. She is generally accused of being two things: (1) too passive, and (2) too moral.

The charge of passivity is perplexing. Surely it is evident that for her to challenge those in power over her is extremely dangerous - in fact, when she finally does challenge them, on a matter of the greatest importance to her and of next to no importance to them, she is swiftly reminded of the weakness of her situation by being deported back to the impoverished family of her parents, who receive her with indifference.

The charge of morality is easier to understand - many readers feel themselves being silently accused by Fanny, and they don't like it. The interesting thing is that those same readers often enjoy "Pride and Prejudice", even though it is evident that the same moral standards are in place in both books. So, why do readers feel the prick of criticism in one and not the other?

Part of the answer is that in "Mansfield Park" the stakes are higher, which squeezes out the levity of "Pride and Prejudice". Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of "Pride and Prejudice", can afford to smile at the follies of others - they are not dangerous to her (at least she thinks not - she comes to think differently before the book is over). Fanny, however, can seldom afford to laugh. Vices that are funny in the powerless can be frightening in the powerful. Fanny's vulnerability to the faults of others is clear to her, and she suffers for it throughout "Mansfield Park".

Another part of the answer is that attractions that are combined in "Pride and Prejudice" are split in "Mansfield Park". In "Pride and Prejudice", Mr. Darcy is both rich and good; in "Mansfield Park", Henry Crawford is only rich. In "Pride and Prejudice", Elizabeth Bennet is both witty and good; in "Mansfield Park", Fanny Price is only good. Readers who liked "Pride and Prejudice" because it had a rich man attracted to a witty woman, will either find nothing in "Mansfield Park" to engage their enthusiasms, or, as is not uncommon, they will actually find themselves drawn to the book's sometimes-antagonists, the Crawfords.

Having dealt with why some people dislike "Mansfield Park", it remains to deal with why other people like it. Its central attraction is the skillful blending of the story of Fanny Price herself, which is the Jane Austen's adaptation of the "Cinderella" archetype, and the story of the other characters, which are of the great Christian themes of fall and redemption.

"Cinderella", is of course the story of hope for the powerless. It has been subject to a certain amount of well-intended misreading in recent decades, but the motive for that misreading really concerns an accident of the eponymous story - the sex of the main character - rather than its real theme, which is universal. "Harry Potter", for example, shows how easily and successfully the Cinderella archetype can be applied to a male protagonist.

Fall and redemption is the other story of "Mansfield Park". At the start, the characters other than Fanny are fallen or falling. Some are so corrupt that we are have no hope for them; their presence is purely malign, endangering those not so badly off as themselves. Others have fallen far, but are not quite so far gone that we do not have hope for them as well as fear of them. Finally, there are those who are only beginning to fall, whose danger is all the more alarming for it.

In "Mansfield Park", these stories are not just side by side, they are interwoven. Jane Austen's Cinderella saves not only herself, but also saves - and almost saves - others as well. All but the worst characters in the book are drawn to the goodness in Fanny, even while they yield to the temptations that threaten them. The book has real tension in that we don't know who will make it and who will not. Those who feel sympathy for the Crawfords are not entirely misreading the story - we are not wrong when we sympathize with a drowning man clutching at a rope thrown to him. Where we can go wrong is not when we wish not for the drowning man to be pulled to shore, but when we wish for the person at the other end of the rope to be pulled in after him.

I must admit that the first half of this book is somewhat slow and at times quite difficult to hold attention to. I understand that the setting, personalities, and situations must be established in the first half. Even so, the story is a gem well worth reading. It has quite a different feel from the other Jane Austen books and the characters stick to your mind as people you will never forget. A few characters are quite tragic yet do not deserve sympathy, which provides an interest in the reader's mind. Fanny Price, the main character of the book, is an admirable and intelligent person whom I would not mind modeling myself after. This is a GREAT book, so don't miss your chance to read it.

Dry, academic, and basically pointless. If the purpose of this book is to honor the fact that women wrote at all, mission accomplished. If the author was trying to clarify what it was women were trying to say or why they were trying to say it, one must read between the lines to find any interpretation at all. Perhaps that is the dauntless task set before the editor, devoid of bias, who attempts to document the writing of an oppressed class in an oppressed time. For a women writer to articulate anything publicly was considered unladylike, shameless, even promiscuous. Women driven to write in spite of such judgements were required to be surreptitious with their statements, subtle, endearing, even self-effacing. As painfully humiliating as it is to be made aware of the manipulation necessitated by the power of male writers, it is an important nuance to be aware of in honoring such women. After all, there are many women who would not have been published at all had they not masqueraded as men. What a loss that would have been! If you can get through the verbiage, and if you are looking specifically for this kind of documentation, an attempt to find this out of print book may be worth it to you. For me, it was painfully disheartening to realize how silenced women can be.