Tomorrow is Mansfield Park’s two hundredth birthday, and what’s a birthday without a party? Our host is the writer and blogger Sarah Emsley, who has planned her blog’s celebration, ,” around a series of weekly guest posts by forty-two Janeites – bloggers, scholars, journalists and authors of Austen spinoff fiction.

Each post will comment on an excerpt from the novel, and the contributions will run in the order of the excerpts--starting tomorrow with Lyn Bennett, Dalhousie University English professor, on the novel’s opening paragraph. (My contribution, on an episode in Chapter 10, will run this summer.)

It’s going to be fascinating to discover everyone’s take on this most fascinating and complicated of Austen novels. I hope you’ll take Sarah up on her “Invitation to Mansfield Park” – what’s a party without lots of guests?