Northanger Abbey was among the last of Jane Austen's novels to be published, in 1818, but the first to be written, mostly in 1798-9. Centred on the loves and friendships of Catherine Morland, an endearing young girl extremely fond of novel-reading, it remains the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's novels. During an eventful season in Bat...more
At Northanger Abbey Jane Austen's charmingly imperfect heroine, Catherine Morland, meets all the trappings of gothic horror and imagines the worst. Fortunately she has, at hand, her own fundamental good sense and the irresistible but unsentimental hero, Henry Tilney.
Though "Northanger Abbey" is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death - well after she'd established her reputation with works such as "Pride and Prejudice", "Emma", and "Sense and Sensibility". The novel is modeled after the day's popular romances and Gothic thrillers, which it then proceeds to ridicule. The...more
During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine's love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father's mysterious house, ...more
NORTHANGER ABBEY is about a naïve young woman whose head is full of the Gothic novels she consumes, and who begins to imagine that life may well be even stranger than fiction. Catherine Morland makes a touching, if somewhat charmingly brainless, heroine; Henry Tilney is a self-possessed and witty hero; and the plot device in which Catherine sees G...more