You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. This week we have a half-hour sample of the first

episode from one of our new Close Reading series, Novel Approaches. Close Readings is a multi-series

podcast subscription from the LRB exploring different periods of literature through a selection of key works.

And in novel approaches, new for

2025, Claire Bucknell and I, and a variety of special guests, discuss a selection of 19th century

British novels. In this first episode, we're joined by Colin Burrow to talk about Jane Austen's

Mansfield Park. Welcome to the first episode in this new series of Close Readings for the London Review of Books,

hosted by me, Claire Bucknell.

And me, Thomas Jones.

And this is a series in which each month we will take a different 19th century British

novel and close read it with a broad focus on

questions of money and property and how they weave through the novels.

Yes, but not exclusively. We'll be talking about them more generally as well. And most of the

episodes, we will be taking it in turns to host them. But this time, as it's the first one,

here we both are. And we're joined by Colin Burrow, who of course Claire spoke with for the

satire series of close readings last year. Hello, Colin. Hello. Very nice to be here. Very nice

to have you. And of course, trying to narrow down the selection of novels from the many myriads published

in the 19th century to reduce them to a mere dozen, trying to come up the constraints.

I thought it might be fun to talk only about books named after houses, but as Claire pointed

that, that would leave out, well, North and south and many others. So we gave up on that.

However, we are beginning, I'm very pleased to say, with a novel named after a house,

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. And to get us started, Colin, maybe you could run through

...