- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (Mar 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192833685
- ISBN-13: 978-0192833686
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.7 x 2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 351,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
Northanger Abbey is the earliest of Jane Austen's great comedies of female enlightenment and combines literary burlesque - making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel - with larger moral, philosophical, and social issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, the inexcusability of not thinking for oneself, and the painful difficulties (especially for women) involved in growing up. Lady Susan and The Watsons are early compositions that reflect many of the qualities of Northanger Abbey. The first is an epistolary novel centring on the intrigues of the villainous Lady Susan; the second is an unfinished example of Jane Austen's most characteristic form - a story where the heroine is outstanding for her sense and goodness, virtues notably lacking in the other characters, who are here part of an altogether bleaker vision. Sanditon, too, is tragically incomplete, and it signals the achievement of a new depth and breadth of comic insight on the part of its author.
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With a new Introduction by Terry Castle, Professor of English, Stanford University
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First Sentence
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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2 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
I Quite Doat on Northanger Abbey!
14 July 2000
Every time I read another Jane Austen novel, I get the insanely anachronistic urge to write her a letter, and tell her how I adore her work. I quite doat on Jane Austen!
On a winter holiday in the fashionable resort town of Bath, 17-year old Catherine Morland welcomes everyone she meets into her impressionable, if somewhat dense heart. The refreshingly honest Tilneys (Henry and Eleanor) and the unapologetically vain Thorpes (John and Isabella) form her central acquaintances. "Northanger Abbey" is a charming metafiction in which Catherine, living in a prototypical small village, goes innocently into the world, and cannot help but have her perceptions altered.
Catherine's obsession with gothic fiction and Austen's 'cliff notes' narrative technique work together to achieve a briskly-paced, and highly amusing story, unlike anything else of hers that I am familiar with. She does indeed satirize gothic fiction, but also uses this forum to poke gentle fun at the very people who read her own novels, and others like them.
To that end, the novel is split between two different ways of reading and understanding - that of Catherine and that of her accidental lover, Henry Tilney. Catherine is the all-believing, undiscerning method, willing to equate the superficial with the real. Henry is the more sophisticated intellect, with a view to the underlying realities of situation and personality. One notable result of these competing epistemologies, is Austen's insistence on acknowledging and legitimizing the literary merit of female authors, and the earnest call for female scholastic and social education beyond knitting, dancing, and romance.
To have the fullest understanding of "Northanger Abbey," it is advisable to take some time to first read Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho," then compare Catherine to Radcliffe's Emily St. Aubert. Those who dislike "Northanger Abbey" because it is not like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Emma" would place too severe of a limit on the range and depth of Austen's authorial skill. This novel purposely stands on its own as a challenge to the comfort of traditional romance, and is a welcome change of pace.
A very interesting read .
31 Jan 1999
I thought that Northanger Abbey was a capturing read and yet, if you have not read any of her other novels you would find the language hard to grasp at first. I think that she describes Catherine Moreland's naivity very well and there is a very pleasing ending.
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