‘If you are afraid of half a dozen speeches,’ cries Mr Rushworth, as the rehearsals for Lovers’ Vows at Mansfield Park are getting underway, ‘what would you do with such a part as mine? I have forty-two to learn.’ Did the editors of the new Blackwell Companion to Jane Austen intend to evoke Mr Rushworth’s self-admiration or his barely disguised anxiety when they commissioned the forty-two essays of this plump, large-format book? The 1997 Cambridge Companionto Jane Austen, by comparison, seems exiguous: thirteen essays of about 7,000 words, edited by two of the Blackwell contributors (Juliet McMaster and Edward Copeland). An updated edition is due later this year, and indeed many of the Blackwell writers also appear in the Cambridge volume.
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