Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen (Penguin Classics)

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

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.77

  A witty exploration of the perils of mistaking fiction for reality, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is edited with an introduction and notes by Marylin Butler in Penguin Classics . During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: rude, boorish John Thorpe, his flirtatious sister Isabella, who shares Catherine's love of sensational novels and intrigue, and sophisticated Eleanor and Henry Tilney, who invite her to their father's mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination, influenced by Gothic romances, such as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho , Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible, impressionable heroine, this is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's works. The Penguin Classics edition of Northanger Abbey is based on the first edition of 1818, and includes a chronology and additional suggestions for further reading. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. Austen began writing at a young age, embarking on what is possibly her best-known work, Pride and Prejudice , at the age of 22. She was the author of Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Emma , Persuasion , Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey . If you enjoyed Northanger Abbey , you may like Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho , also available in Penguin Classics . The most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal . (Virginia Woolf). These modern editions are to be strongly recommended for their scrupulous texts, informative notes and helpful introductions . (Brian Southam, The Jane Austen Society).

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $16.83

  First accepted by a publisher in 1803, Northanger Abbey was eventually published posthumously in 1818. In it Austen weaves a romance full of suspense and comedy around the heroine Catherine Morland's first foray into society. The style of the novel is a unique hybrid; along the way Austen parodies the eighteenth-century novel of manners, the Gothic novel, and even the educational treatises of the time.
  
  The second Broadview edition includes a revised introduction, notes, bibliography, and expanded appendices of background contextual materials.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.28

• New

  paperback
  

  $6.79

  Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent. Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her. In this, her first full-length novel, Austen also fixes her sharp, ironic gaze on other kinds of contemporary novel, especially the Gothic school made famous by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine's reading becomes intertwined with her social and romantic adventures, adding to the uncertainties and embarrassments she must undergo before finding happiness.