Jane Austen Collection - Northanger Abbey

typographical errors have been carefully corrected and the entire text has been reset and redesigned by Adeptio Editions to enhance readability, while respecting the original edition. This is Jane Austen's fifth novel, first published in 1818 (without Hugh Thomson's illustrations). The novel tells the story of Catherine Morland, a young and naive woman who goes to Bath one summer, where she is introduced to culture, entertainment, and high society-and where she falls in love with the handsome and wealthy clergyman, Henry Tilney, after meeting him at a society ball. Catherine is obsessed with romantic Gothic novels and feels she "in training for a heroine," always finding mystery and intrigue around her. "Northanger Abbey" is another of Austen's great novels and, as with her other remarkable works, "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Emma," and "Persuasion," the reader will be delighted with Austen's elegant narrative style, and with the story's fascinating characters and their social interactions. About the Author: Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist whose seminal works, inspired by her own upbringing as well as in the landed gentry, have influenced successive generations. She was the seventh child-out of eight-and second daughter of Cassandra (n e Leigh) and the Reverend George Austen. She was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Her parents were well-respected middle-class community members. Her father was the local Anglican clergyman and supplemented the family income by taking private pupils in the family home and parsonage. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen, came from an aristocratic family and influenced Jane's sense of social class and self-worth. When they were young, Jane and her six brothers and sister were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. With a romantic vein, but nevertheless a realist-known for her style and ironic humor as well as for her fascinating depiction of women's domestic roles of the early nineteenth century-Austen wrote "Sense and Sensibility" (1811), "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), "Mansfield Park" (1814), "Emma" (1815), "Northanger Abbey" (1817), and "Persuasion" (1818), all of which replete with memorable protagonists-as is Catherine Morland in "Northanger Abbey."