Northanger Abbey
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Written by Jane Austen and Alfred Mac Adam.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
A wonderfully entertaining coming-of-age story, Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen’s “Gothic parody.” Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.
The story’s unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry’s mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.
Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen’s novels, yet at its core this delightful novel is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.
Alfred Mac Adam teaches literature at Barnard College–Columbia University. He is a translator and art critic.
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Ten Taxis thinks this book is Worth Reading.
If you've never read Jane Austen before, don't start with this one. Northanger Abby is a departure from the Austen style made famous in her other five novels. First, it is self-conciously concerned with books which were popular at the time that Austen was writing, and with the characters in those books. A knowledge of those books would certainly enhance the pleasure which is to be gained from Northanger Abby. A lack of such knowlegde doesn't detract from the narrative, but the very different popular culture of today's age does make Catherine Morland, the heroine, and Austen's writing style in this novel, slightly outmoded and antiquated. In keeping with her commentary on the horridness of gothic romance writing, Austen adopts the habit of constantly drawing the reader out of the narrative by reminding you that you are reading a book which she is writing. This "editorialising" prevents the read from ever becoming properly escapist.
The story concerns the very provincial and naive Catherine Morland's visit to Bath. In Bath she meets the Thorpes and the Tilneys who open her mind to the ways of the world and leave her, at the book's end, a sounder character than when she begin. The plot accelerates almost over-hastily at the end to wrap up in an unsatisfying two chapters devoid of the detail which populates the first three-quarters of the read. Austen's wit is ever-present throughout and her characterisation and dialogue are masterful.