Northanger Abbey (Penguin Classics S.)

by Marilyn Butler (Author), Marilyn Butler (Author), Jane Austen (Author), Jane Austen (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $4.77

  Northanger Abbey is the earliest of Jane Austen's great comedies of female enlightenment and combines literary burlesque - making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel - with larger moral, philosophical, and social issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, the inexcusability of not thinking for oneself, and the painful difficulties (especially for women) involved in growing up. Lady Susan and The Watsons are early compositions that reflect many of the qualities of Northanger Abbey. The first is an epistolary novel centring on the intrigues of the villainous Lady Susan; the second is an unfinished example of Jane Austen's most characteristic form - a story where the heroine is outstanding for her sense and goodness, virtues notably lacking in the other characters, who are here part of an altogether bleaker vision. Sanditon, too, is tragically incomplete, and it signals the achievement of a new depth and breadth of comic insight on the part of its author.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $14.71

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.44

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $15.59

  Catherine Morland is taken to Bath by her aunt. There she encounters the social whirl denied her at home. She meets and befriends Isabella Thorpe and her boorish brother John. She meets the charming but eccentric Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor. And all the time her head is full of the gothic fantasies of Mrs Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, scenes from which will keep intruding into the daily life of Bath society. In the second act, Catherine accepts an invitation to the Tilney's country seat at Northanger Abbey. Once again, lurid images of Udolpho keep superimposing themselves on the perfectly pleasant house at Northanger. Until she finally gets her man...This spirited adaptation for a cast of eight (plus umpteen extras if desired) is by the widely experienced theatre director, Tim Luscombe. It was first seen at York Theatre Royal in May 2004.

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $14.95

  Portraying social life in fashionable Bath and centred around Catherine Morland, this novel ridicules the popular tales of romance and terror and contrasts with these the normal realities of life.