MATURE JANE AUSTEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 14

MATURE JANE AUSTEN

J/HEN the dramatisation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park was broadeast by the BBC last year the radio critic of The. Scotsman said: "Though scarcely a rabid Janeite myself, I own that the domestic flurries and matrimonial scurries of this particular work, with its tinge of acidity, came over most rewardingly. . ." Now to be heard from National stations of the NZBS as a nine-part serial, Mansfield Park was the first novel of Jane Austen’s maturity. Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, in which she gave her sense of fun full play, were written before she was 25. She was in her thirties when she began her second nn re ne

trio with Mansfield Park. "For the first time," wrote Frank Swinnerton (when he introduced. this serial in the Radio Times), "she took a heroine who lacked confidence in herself. . . For the first time she allowed her heroine residence in a great house. For the first time, also, she had intricately considered the structure of her work. Mansfield Park is thus less amusing, less spontaneously merry than its predecessors, and more complex. Whereas the comic characters of the earlier books have been openly ridiculous, Mrs. Norris is profoundly shown with all-comprehending irony. No wonder Mr. Maugham regards Mansfield Park as Jane Austen’s masterpiece!" eo This radio version of Mansfield Park is in the hands of two women. Thea Holme, who adapted it and acts as narrator, also broadcast in her own version of Northanger Abbey; and Mary Hope Allen, who produced it, will be remembered as producer also of the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. The players include Charles Cameron, Lydia Sherwood, Gladys Young and Peggy Bryan. Mansfield Park will start from 3YC at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1 (repeating from 3YA the following Sunday), and from 2XN at 8.15 p.m. on Sunday, July 5. Later it will be heard from other National stations.