Patronage

Published the same year as Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), Edgeworth's most commercially successful novel, the book is a comedy of manners, plus a commentary on her society's class system, including the various kinds of work available to men of different social classes. Like all her novels, this book also deals with how women and men are treated differently. The theme of sexual and financial patronage runs throughout the book, as the Percys and Falconers make their way through the world at different levels of society.