Northanger Abbey is one of the early novels of Jane Austen, the first to be submitted for publication. It tells the story of Catherine Morland, the passably attractive seventeen-year old daughter of a clergyman with a comfortable income and his wife. She leads an orderly and ordinary life, but has a penchant for the gothic novels of the day and a lively imagination to go with it. She is invited by a family friend to visit Bath, and there meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to stay at Northanger Abbey, the family estate. Catherine’s imagination has a field day during her holiday, filling the novel with the clichés of the gothic genre: ruined castles, secret notes, locked chests in hidden rooms, and the obligatory tyrannical father. While Catherine finds portentous horrors lurking in every quotidian event, Austen skewers the horrors and hypocrisy of the polite society of her so-called friends.

Originally entitled Susan, Northanger Abbey was written in 1798-1799, then revised for publication in 1803, when it was sold for the princely sum of L10 to a London bookseller, who subsequently decided not to publish it and sold it back to her brother for the same price. Austen revised it again shortly before her death in 1817, changing the title to Catherine. Her brother Henry arranged for its publication after her death, and it was published in December 1817 along with Persuasion under the title Northanger Abbey. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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