Drama

Lovers’ Vows

by August von Kotzebue

This is the play the young people of Mansfield Park get up while Sir Thomas is away in Antigua, with its seduced mother, its unacknowledged son and its forward heroine. Elizabeth Inchbald adapted it from Kotzebue’s German in 1798, and it was a hit at Covent Garden. Austen’s first readers knew it well enough to see at once why Fanny Price thought it unfit.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 1 hr 15 min

Where to find it

The Austen Room

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #4554. In the public domain in the United States.