The Youngest Miss Ward

The Youngest Miss Ward is the Joan Aiken Austen-adjacent novel that takes its protagonist from the family tree of Mansfield Park rather than from one of the original novels. The three Ward sisters, in Mansfield Park, are Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Fanny's mother Mrs. Price. Aiken postulates a fourth, the youngest Miss Harriet Ward, whose marriage prospects work out very differently from her sisters'.

The book follows Harriet through a courtship that does not lead where it should and an independent life that takes shape in ways that would have horrified the Austen original. Aiken handles the period and the social pressures with her usual technical accomplishment. The novel reads, in places, like a quiet rejoinder to Mansfield Park's strict moral economy.

Three stars. A small private pleasure for Austen readers, lower-key than Eliza's Daughter but worth the time.