Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Fiction, Literary, Classics
The first pages of Northanger Abbey send up Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho: Jane Austen's heroine, is established to be a born heroine -- but she's Austen's heroine, not fated for any particular reason; just fated. In Austen's words, "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." But fated she was, and Austen tells her tale delicviously. She spends the novel exploring decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers -- but none of them are what one would expect in a gothic potboiler, nor in a title of Radcliffe's. Catherine goes with family friends to the spa at Bath; and there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. That's where the book invokes the Horrid Props of a gothic novel: there are dreadful portents everywhere, even in the most wonderfully prosaic events.
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Become an affiliateBorn in 1775, Jane Austen published four of her six novels anonymously. Her work was not widely read until the late nineteenth century, and her fame grew from then on. Known for her wit and sharp insight into social conventions, her novels about love, relationships, and society are more popular year after year. She has earned a place in history as one of the most cherished writers of English literature.