num_pages: 379
description: Northanger Abbey depicts the misadventures of Catherine Morland, young, ingenuous, and mettlesome, and an indefatigable reader of gothic novels. Their romantic excess and dark overstatement feed her imagination, as tyrannical fathers and diabolical villains work their evil on forlorn heroines in isolated settings. What could be more remote from the uneventful securities of life in the midland counties of England? Yet as Austen brilliantly contrasts fiction with reality, ordinary life takes a more sinister turn, and edginess and circumspection are reaffirmed alongside comedy and literary burlesque. Also including Austen's other short fictions, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, this valuable new edition shows her to be as innovative at the start of her career as at its close.
language: English
title: Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon
titlecomplete: Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon
characters: Catherine Morland, Isabella Thorpe, General Tilney, John Thorpe, Henry Tilney, Eleanor Tilney
genres: Historical Fiction, School, Gothic, Literature, Classic Literature, Classics, British Literature, Romance, Fiction, 19th Century
ratings_count: 7584
places: United Kingdom
publisher: Oxford University Press