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Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey

GothicLiterary Fiction
Pages
252
Published
1817
Language
English

Synopsis

Catherine Morland is an ordinary, good-natured young woman with an extraordinary appetite for Gothic novels. When family friends invite her to spend a season in Bath, she is thrilled to step into the wider world for the first time, making friends, attending balls, and imagining herself the heroine of one of her beloved thrillers.

In Bath she meets the witty clergyman Henry Tilney and the scheming Isabella Thorpe, and is eventually invited to the Tilneys' home, Northanger Abbey. Primed by too many horrid novels, Catherine lets her imagination run wild, convincing herself the abbey hides dark secrets and its master a terrible crime, only to be gently and mortifyingly corrected by reality.

Northanger Abbey was among the first novels Jane Austen completed, though it was published after her death in 1817. A sharp, affectionate satire of Gothic fiction and of the reader's appetite for melodrama, it is also a clear-eyed coming-of-age story about learning to tell romance from real life.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

FunnyLightheartedRomanticWhimsicalReflective

Genres

Gothic Literary Fiction Classics Horror Regency Historical Fiction Suspense Satire

About the author

J
Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist whose six major novels examine the social and economic realities facing women in the landed gentry of Georgian England. Born at Steventon in Hampshire, she published anonymously: Sense and Sensibility (1811) appeared "By a Lady", and Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) followed without her name on them. She died at Winchester in 1817, aged 41; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were issued together later that...

Characters

Henry TilneyProtagonist

The witty, teasing clergyman Catherine falls for.

Catherine MorlandProtagonist

A guileless young woman whose love of Gothic novels colors how she sees the world.

Isabella ThorpeSupporting

Catherine's fashionable, self-serving friend in Bath.

General TilneySupporting

Henry's imperious father, master of Northanger Abbey.

All characters in Northanger Abbey

Frequently asked questions

  • Is this the first novel Jane Austen wrote?

    While it was the first of her novels to be completed for publication, it was the last of her major works to be released, appearing posthumously in 1817 alongside Persuasion. Austen originally drafted the manuscript between 1798 and 1799 under the working title Susan.

  • Are there film or television versions of this story?

    Several adaptations exist, including a 1987 television film and a 2007 production starring Felicity Jones and JJ Feild. These versions vary significantly in tone, with some leaning into the surreal or campy elements of the protagonist's imagination.

  • Did the author intend for this book to be a parody?

    The narrative serves as a direct response to the Gothic literary trends of the late eighteenth century, specifically referencing and subverting the tropes found in works like Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. By contrasting a grounded reality with the sensationalist expectations of her heroine, Austen highlights the absurdity of the era's popular fiction.

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