steepholm

I don't know that Mansfield Park is my favourite Austen exactly but the first page, with its incredibly concise account of how one Ward sister ends up on the edge of the aristocracy and another in a near-slum, is one of my favourite bits of writing about social class. And Henry and Edmund being a split Mr B. would explain why both of them make me feel crawly all over. I gave a couple of lectures on the novel once, and in the questions afterwards I remarked that Edmund was a terrible prig, to which the student who'd asked the question agreed fervently, "Oh, complete prick, yeah." Well, not wrong.