Trade Paperback - NEW
One of Austen's earliest novels is the story of a naive young woman who becomes convinced that she is trapped in a dark Gothic romance. With a new introduction in honor of the author's 250th birthday.
This story of naïve but sweetly appealing Catherine Morland, a willing victim of the 19th-century craze for Gothic literature who is determined to see herself as the heroine of a dark and thrilling romance, is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry.
When Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey, the grand though forbidding ancestral seat of her suitor, Henry Tilney, she finds herself embroiled in a real drama of misapprehension, mistreatment, and mortification, until common sense and humor—and a crucial clarification of Catherine’s financial status—puts all to right. Written in 1798 but not published until after Austen’s death in 1817, Northanger Abbey is characteristically clearheaded and strong, and infinitely light and subtle in its comedy.
