"What have you been judging from? . . . Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?"
During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who introduces Catherine to the joys of Gothic romances, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father's house, Northanger Abbey. There, influenced by novels of horror and intrigue, Catherine comes to imagine terrible crimes committed by General Tilney, risking the loss of Henry's affection, and has to learn the difference between fiction and reality, false friends and true. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's works.
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. This edition is based on the first edition, and includes a new chronology and additional suggestions for further reading.
Did you find this review helpful?