Friday, May 9th is the big day for the launch of my series of guest posts celebrating 200 years of Mansfield Park . I am absolutely delighted that Lyn Bennett is going to kick things off that day by writing about the opening paragraph of the novel. Lyn teaches in the Department of English at Dalhousie University and she’s the author of Women Writing of Divinest Things: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Pembroke, Wroth, and Lanyer (2004).

And I am very happy to tell you about all the wonderful people who’ve agreed to write for the series. In January I wrote about the first few contributors, and I’ve talked to several people since then. Here’s the full list (so far) of contributors: Elaine Bander, Deborah Barnum, Elizabeth Baxter, John Baxter, Lyn Bennett, Diana Birchall, Lorrie Clark, Jennie Duke, Natasha Duquette, Lynn Festa, Susan Allen Ford, Margaret Horwitz, Syrie James, Theresa…